News and Events
JULY 2010
Suhayl Saadi's novel Joseph's Box has been nominated for the 2011 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
JUNE 2010
We're delighted to announce six Two Ravens Press authors on this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival programme: Alice Thompson, Alasdair Gray, Richard Price, Nora Chassler, Mandy Haggith and Regi Claire. Well worth a ticket or two!
See the EIBF website to download a programme.
APRIL 2010
Regi Claire's Fighting It is longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Click here for details and the full longlist.
MARCH 2010
Our list is now full into 2012, and we're not currently accepting submissions from new writers pending a major relocation and refocus of our business. We're sorry, but because of the relocation and associated house renovations we'll be unable to respond to any unsolicited enquiries received for the next six months or so i.e. during the period of time for which this notice remains here. We suggest you check back no sooner than October 2010.
FEBRUARY 2010
Friday 26th February will see the launch of Small Expectations, the latest book by Donald S Murray, published by Two Ravens Press. This unique event will be held simultaneously in Lerwick (at Shetland College), Inverness (UHI MIllenium Institute), Stornoway (Lewis Castle College), Kirkwall (Northern College), and Skye (Sabhal Mor Ostaig) via the video network of the University of the Highlands and Islands and will begin at 4.15pm.
http://www.shetlandarts.org/small-expectations-by-donald-s-murray-multi-venue-book-launch/
JANUARY 2010
ULLAPOOL BOOK FESTIVAL 2010 GUEST WRITERS
Ullapool Book Festival has released the names of writers who will be guests at this year’s festival due to take place in Ullapool Village Hall from the morning of Friday 7 May to lunchtime on Sunday 9 May.
For the sixth festival organisers have lined up sessions of fiction, storytelling, non-fiction, poetry, writing workshops and a ‘one-woman’ show.
The fiction writers are Iain Banks, Ron Butlin, Regi Claire, Jason Donald, Anne Donovan, Iain Finlay Macleod, Kevin MacNeil, Andrea McNicoll and James Robertson. Both Iain Banks and James Robertson will be giving exclusive readings from new works. Iain Banks’ reading is a National Library of Scotland event.
There will be poetry from Umberto Ak’abal (from Guatemala) and Scotland’s Stewart Conn and Tom Leonard.
New non-fiction comes from Andrew Greig, and this year’s Saturday morning storyteller will be Jess Smith who will also tell stories to children in the afternoon.
Add The Moira Monologues from Alan Bissett, writing workshops with both Alan and Kevin MacNeil, Mandy Morning sessions (with local short story writer Mandy Henderson and published poet and author Mandy Haggith from the neighbouring parish of Assynt), and a couple of late night events and we’ve got a line-up to equal previous festivals..
The full programme will be announced at the book festival launch on Saturday 20 March in Ullapool Village Hall. Tickets will be on sale at the launch and then on general sale from Wednesday 24 March. The launch will be preceded by another literary gem – an hour with author and poet Angus Peter Campbell. Tickets for the event/launch will be on sale from The Booth www.thebooth.co.uk or in person from Ullapool Bookshop and The Ceilidh Place Bookshop from 1 February.
See www.ullapoolbookfestival.co.uk
NOVEMBER 2009
Two Ravens Press is delighted to announce that Regi Claire's Fighting It has been shortlisted for the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award 2009, and Esther Woolfson's Piano Angel has been shortlisted for the Saltire Society Homecoming Award. Esther's shortlisting comes hot on the heels of Piano Angel's appearance on the prestigious IMPAC Award longlist. Other publishers whose books appear on the shortlist are: Jonathan Cape, John Murray, Duckworth, Quercus, Granta, Faber, Bloodaxe, Macmillan, Edinburgh University Press, Oxford University Press, Birlinn and Ùr-Sgeul. With the exception of Ùr-Sgeul, Two Ravens Press is the smallest publisher on the lists.
The Prizes, worth £10 000 for Book of the Year and £1500 for the Homecoming Award, will be awarded on Monday 30th November by Michael Russell, MSP, Minister for Culture in a ceremony at The National Library of Scotland.
We are delighted to announce that Esther Woolfson's very fine novel Piano Angel has been nominated for the 2010 IMPAC Award! There's some tough competition on the longlist, but this is a well-deserved accolade. Esther is also author of the bestselling Corvus (published by Granta).
OCTOBER 2009
A Wilder Vein is to be featured on BBC Radio 4's travel magazine, Excess Baggage, on Saturday October 24 at 10am: Sara Maitland and Andrew Greig in conversation with John McCarthy.
Our 2010 catalogue is now complete and ready for download, on the right sidebar.
We're very sad to say that internationally acclaimed innovative author Raymond Federman has died. We had the great pleasure of spending time with him and publishing a new edition of his classic Double or Nothing, and Sharon also had the great privilege of working with him on a translation from the French of The Sam Book, his memoir/tribute to his friend, Samuel Beckett. Federman, who escaped Auschwitz by being thrust into a small closet by his mother just before she and his sisters were taken, espoused the concept of 'laughterature' – laughter as a means of survival. He'll be missed; the world needs more writers like him.
SEPTEMBER 2009
We're delighted to announce our new 2010 list. Visit the 'new books' page for more information.
AUGUST 2009
The Last Bear by Mandy Haggith is the winner of the inaugural Robin Jenkins Literary Award. See http://www.robinjenkinsaward.org for more information.
David Knowles' poem 'So What Does It Feel Like?' from Meeting the Jet Man has been Highly Commended by the judges of the Forward Prize and will appear in the 2009 Forward Book of Poetry.
The Independent: Suhayl Saadi's 'Joseph's Box' should have been a Booker contender...
Suhayl Saadi’s novel Joseph’s Box has been mentioned by The Independent’s literary editor Boyd Tonkin in an article on the Booker Prize as one of the novels that should have been a contender. Well, we did enter it … but, like Tonkin, have given up expecting anything other than the obvious from most big literary prizes. But it’s great to see some recognition for this stunningly original novel.
Tonkin says: ‘We should never have expected a jury as orthodox in taste as the one James Naughtie chairs to seek out as waywardly extravagant a novel as Joseph’s Box by the Scottish doctor-author Suhayl Saadi, which drives us deep into the history and myths of Europe and south Asia alike. But, in a bolder year, he and other writers from non-corporate imprints might have stood a better chance.’
