East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet ... unless they are united by the power of women's tennis ... and a camera phone

The WTA likes to arrange photo shoots of their tennis stars in activities off the court, to let the world see that they are rounded individuals. Remember the infamous photo in GQ (or was it Esquire) of Anastasia Msykina sitting naked astride a horse? Great pr for women's tennis, that.

Here is a great picture ... Danish star Caroline Wozniacki photographing a woman in Doha. Is it just me, or is the woman giving a dagger stare at Wozniacki's legs, and thinking "why is she wearing sports clothes off the court and what do I have to do to stop her photographing me with her annoying camera phone, and how in blazes do I get her to take those sweaty pins off my clean, newly-woven rugs"???

Image: WTA website.

The Guardian First Book Award ... and Norway

I am surprised and pleased to let you know that the shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award has been announced and An Elegy for Easterly is on it. It joins three novels, The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey, The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton, The Collected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen and one non-fiction book, A Swamp Full of Dollars by Michael Peel. I am particularly delighted to see Reif on it, I met him in Australia in August and liked both him and TS Spivet very much indeed.

The winner is announced on 2 December in London, making that my last Easterly-related outing of the year. My penultimate event is in Oslo in mid-November: Klagesang for Easterly, the Norwegian version of my book, will be published on 12 November, and from the 17-19th, I will be in Oslo attending a festival celebrating African literature. I will be doing two panels, one with Chimamanda Adichie and Tsitsi Dangarembga and another with Binyavanga Wainaina and Niq Mhlongo. Do please spread the word if you know anyone in Oslo. Details here soon.

Searching for Words by Tania Hershman

I mentioned in my post that I would be doing a Faber Academy course on writing across cultures, and writing alien. And here, right on cue, is Tania Hershman with an essay on feeling alien when she first went to live in Jerusulam and, then on her return home to Britain, feeling alien all over again. It's a neat exploration of the duality of identity, and the complicated relationship some of us have with both our adopted lands and the lands we are "from". I owe Tania a public apology: she sent this to me ages ago, but my inbox, alas, it runneth over, and I did not see it. If you enjoy this, as I know you will, please read more of Tania's work at her blog. She has also published a short story collection, The White Road and Other stories, pictured here, which was commended at last year's Orange Prize for new writers. And, over at The Short Review , which she edits, Tania is, if you will pardon the mixed metaphors, breathing life and giving legs to the short story.

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In Jerusalem, where I moved to from London in 1994 and lived for 15 years, no-one was going to mistake me, with my pale skin and blonde hair, for a native. I tried as hard as I could, learning Hebrew until I was fluent, but you can only go so far. Despite being bilingual, my friends were English speakers, I was an “Anglo”, and I learned to accept that.

As a freelance science journalist, I wrote in English, conducted interviews in English, and hardly used my Hebrew, but loved being able to make myself understood in another language. I travelled the country, meeting scientists and technology entrepreneurs, all of whom were excited and optimistic: they thought their invention, their new process, would change the world. It was a wonderful and inspiring job, but after ten years, I realised that I was writing about other people's creativity instead of being creative myself. I started attending short story workshops in America and England. On one of these, a few years ago, Ali Smith, whose short stories inspired me to try writing in the first place, advised me to give up journalism and throw myself into fiction full time. I did, and a few months later, Salt Publishing offered me a book deal for my first collection.

It all happened so fast.

The White Road and Other Stories was published in Sept 2008, and life changed. Life changed radically. The book got more attention than I had dreamed of, and as a consequence, I got more attention, especially in Jerusalem. People wanted to talk to me about my book, about my stories, which is always wonderful. But I also found it very stressful. The nagging feeling of discomfort I had had about being the only English-speaking full-time short story writer around grew. I wanted other writers to talk to about all this. I have many writer friends online, and they are a great support, a real community. But I felt very lonely in Israel. The Hebrew writing community was something foreign to me. I started feeling very, very English again.

The decision to leave, to move countries, came suddenly, but when it came it felt right for many reasons. I had done a reading at the Frank O'Connor Short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, last year, just as my book was published, and was electrified by being around other writers and talking about short stories. In England, I thought, I can get this “fix” more than once a year, much more.

So we moved, with our two cats (who are now, sadly and cruelly, in quarantine), two months ago. And that is when the culture shock hit. Yes, I had been back often on holiday. But something shifted inside me, knowing that this wasn't a short trip, and I found that I couldn't get through a whole sentence in English without stopping to search for a word. After 15 years, there were gaps in my English that I would have filled in in Hebrew. (I like to think this bilingualism made my fiction more "innovative"!)

Here in Bristol, I look English, I sound English, but I feel totally foreign. It's not just the language; I have lost all sense of cultural cues. In Israel there is no concept of politeness and formality. Anyone will talk to you, anywhere, about anything. During my first few weeks in England, I noticed a glazed look that would come over the shop assistant's face quite suddenly, and realise that I had chatted “too much”. I'd gone over acceptable boundaries, because I didn't know them. Every time this happened, and it was pretty frequent, I felt embarrassed, ashamed, alien.

Things are getting a little better. My spoken English is more fluent, I am watching more carefully for the signs that I am getting close to “over-talking” to someone. I have found an ex-pat hairdresser to share experiences with!

And, on the far more positive side, I am running around the country from literary event to literary event, thrilled at the wealth of opportunities. I have given two readings, been offered the position of Fiction Editor of a literary journal, invited to judge several short story competitions, host an evening for emerging Jewish writers, and go into schools to talk about writing. That intoxicates me. The thought that all this has come to me without even trying makes me dizzy with the possibilities that are still out there when I do get my act together.

I am beginning to feel settled enough to write, and am interested to see what comes out. I have never written anything set in Israel. Most of my stories are set in places I have never been to. I like to make things up, that is what entertains me, and I am, always, the reader I am writing for. Will what I write about change with my location? It's too early to tell.

Right now, I don't feel English and I don't feel Israeli. I am straddling worlds. They tell me a writer should always feel somewhat alienated from society around her. But I am in a country, on a continent, where I can meet people and talk short stories all the time. I may chat too much to strangers in shops, I may struggle to find the right word when I speak, but at least in this language, I am fluent.

The Appointment in Samarra as retold by W. Somerset Maugham

I have been reading and rereading a lot of Maugham ... I will be leading one of the Faber Academy courses next year in March, I have chosen the theme writing across cultures, and I am looking for good examples of how to write about places and cultures that are not your "own". If you have never read Maugham's story Rain, abeg, abeg, look for it now and read it abeg. It is widely available online. In the meantime, this is one of my favourite little Maughamses, it sent a chill down my spine when I read it first a long time ago, and, if you are new to it, I hope it does the same to you.

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The speaker is Death ...

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.

The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.

Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?

That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

In which I propose that Bonnie Greer be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Watching Question Time on BBC last night (thank you Swisscom and Bluewin TV), I was filled with great optimism about the power of passion and clarity in fighting the kind of malevolence that extremist parties call politics. A panel of politicians from the UK's three mainstream parties, in an emotionally-charged atmosphere, took on the far-right BNP leader Nick Griffin. Something large was at stake, something fundamental to the life of Britain, to its very identity, something that mattered, and it showed. If you will believe it, which you will if you watched it, I came close to feeling sorry for Griffin. He was confronted with a barrage of questions, and damningly, with past words from his own mouth. The three politicos, Sayeda Warsi, Jack Straw, and Chris Huhne did a damn fine job, as did David Dimbleby who chaired it, but the best person on the panel was Bonnie Greer.

The politicians all had something to sell, but Bonnie, as a writer and critic had the tougher job, I thought, of speaking for the ordinary person. Now, because Bonnie is black, she could not afford to come across as a strident harpy. And she was spectacular. She was level-headed, she was funny, she was unassailable in her clarity. Asked by the Evening Standard later why she had not been more strident, she said: I didn't need to, because others like Jack Straw waded in so heavily. I felt my job was to subtly lampoon him, toy with him, expose the idiocy of his ideas. I didn't want to come across as the angry, screaming black woman pointing my finger and hollering because that's how people like Griffin and his supporters view black women. I saw us as a team - it wasn't an ego thing, wasn't as if I had to take him down all on my own.

Here is how The Scotsman summed up the evening: Charming, witty, disarming , amusing - there's no doubt who stole the show … Bonnie Greer.

Bonnie, in the Evening Standard interview, also talked about a touching moment just before they started recording when Sayeda Warsi ran over to her and said: Are you okay sitting next to Griffin?

And Bonnie Greer said: I'm from Chicago, I'm not scared of this guy!

Bonnie Greer for Prime Minister!

Two stories about little things, one from the old Zimbabwe and one from the new

The poet and critic Musaemura Zimunya very kindly said of my book that it is extraordinary how I, a non-resident Zimbabwean, can see and write about things in Zimbabwe that he, living in Zimbabwe, does not see. I am not sure that there is anything extraordinary about this: I write the kind of stories that I write because I am interested in, and have always been interested in, the little things. That telling little detail that says something larger.

Like the price of butter.

It shocked me deeply that in Zimbabwe in 2005, butter made in Zimbabwe from the milk of native cows was almost three times more expensive than imported butter made from the milk of foreign cows. That small detail, I thought, was more powerful than all the statistics, more powerful even than the fiery rhetoric, it said all that needed to be said about the wasteful mismanagement of the land reform programme.

So I have always been interested in the little things.

Here, for you, is a story about little things, two stories about little things, one from the old Zimbabwe, and one from the new.

This is the first, a story from the old Zimbabwe.

When I was in Grade Six, and my sister Regina in Grade Four, our bicycle was stolen from the Mabelreign shops. It was a small adult bicycle, it had been my mother's, but, with the seat lowered to the lowest point possible, and being a lady's bicycle without a chimutanda in the middle, the three of us who were old enough to ride a bicycle could ride it. My brother, who was in Grade Two, actually learned to ride on it, but low as it was, he could never sit on it and actually pedal, so as long as we had that bicycle, he was a standing rider. We shared it like we shared everything, like we shared our one tennis racket, a wooden blue junior Slazenger – when we played tennis in the driveway, one person used the racket, while the other used a plank that had once been part of the wall of the dog kennel that had belonged to the Spooners, the white family whose old house in John Gleig Avenue was now our new one.

On the day we lost our bicycle, Regina had ridden it the shops. She wore her Christmas dress, a pretty yellow pinafore dress with white stars that my mother had bought from Truworths. It was her favourite dress then, a good dress for visiting. She was not supposed to be wearing it, but, sometimes, when our mother was not there, we wore the things we were not supposed to wear. Regina parked the bicycle outside Bon Marche, we did not have a lock, and so the bicycle pretty much invited anyone who chose to steal it to do so.

Somebody did.

When Regina came out of the supermarket, she looked everywhere, but it had gone. She was distressed and upset, but she knew there was only one thing to do, and that was to go to Mabelreign Police Station. The police were our friends, we were often told, the station was opposite our school, Alfred Beit, it was a reassuring sight on our daily walk to school. We passed a policeman everyday on our way to school, a traffic policeman in a green reflective jacket who stopped the cars with a lollipop sign so that we crossed Stortford Parade safely. So it was only logical that Regina should cry her way to the police station. A sympathetic policeman bought her a sweet.

Then he drove her home, in a police car.

Now this is a story from the new Zimbabwe.

In 2004, at the same house in John Gleig Avenue, my parents were burgled twice in one year. Each time, the policemen could not come to inspect the premises or take a statement, they said.

They had no transport.

In which I read in Zurich, speak on a panel in Geneva and serve on a jury for all of Switzerland

If you are in Zurich on the evening of 24 October 2009, drop into a bookshop near you. You are in for a treat, as Zurich celebrates a "Long Night of Short Stories". I understand that there will be readings all over Zurich. I will be reading at Orell Füssli The Bookshop at 70 Bahnhoffstrasse, more details in German here. Please do drop by füer einem spannenden Abend!

You may be aware that after Kofi Annan left the United Nations, he set up the Africa Progress Panel. It was initially conceived as a watchdog over the commitments on debt relief and aid for African countries that were made at the 31st summit of the G8 at Gleneagles, but has progressively taken on an expanded role, including involvement with African conflicts and hosting discussions on issues of African interest. I have been invited by the APP to sit on a discussion with Richard Dowden, the director of the Royal African Society and former Africa editor at The Economist. There will also be a third person, still to be announced, and the discussion will centre on the bee in my bonnet, namely, the crisis of leadership across the African continent. This will be at the end of November, and all my Geneva friends will get a robot email as soon as the date is announced.

I recently had another delightful invitation: to sit on a jury for a prize for schoolchildren across Switzerland. I love this initiative, where children compete to produce the best artwork around an annual theme. In the past, they have created art around the themes of peace and the environment. This year, the theme is human rights: the challenge is to convey the idea of human rights through the image of an umbrella. The project is patroned by Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who was President of the Confederation until last year. There are some interesting people on the jury, including people involved in Swiss politics which I am getting more and more intersted in, and I can't wait to meet them. The organisers are also hoping to get Kofi Annan to be on the jury, which would be absolutely brilliant for the kids.

I am enjoying the delicious irony here. Last year, I offered my services to our new government and my overtures were ignored. Now, out of the blue, I get an invitation from Kofi Annan's APP and the Swiss Foreign Minister. Ponder, ponder. Ponder. That Swiss passport that I swore I would never apply for? Is looking very attractive right now. Ponder.

The Nude Not Naked Book Tour: Nuala Ní Chonchúir

Please join me in welcoming my friend, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, a fabulous and gorgeous Irish writer who has chosen to make my blog one of the stops on the virtual book tour of her latest short story collection Nude. I was privileged to be at her book launch in Cork in September, where I managed to get two signed copies of Nude to give away as part of the tour. Please let me know if you would like a signed copy.

One thing I have discovered this year is that writers can be slightly psychotic. Having met Nuala, and seen her reading from her work and in the presence of (part of) her family, her partner Finbar and lovely baby Juno, I can say that Nuala not only writes superbly but is also, refreshingly, normal.

Or is she?

Join me as I find out by asking seemingly random questions ...

Firstly Nuala, tell us a little bit about Nude, your third collection of stories. How did you come to write it, how long did it take, and why did you choose this particular title?

I was just writing stories as usual when I noticed the theme of the nude emerging. I write a lot about art anyway so that was a continuation of a well-loved theme. I spent three years on the stories that make up the book. Nude is a unifying title rather than the title of one of the stories.

The nudes are not always in paintings – some of them are lovers, for example.

You have also published two collections of poetry. Do you find that there are links between your stories and your poetry?

The links are probably thematic – I write a lot about women’s lives, about love, about art and about the breakdown of relationships. My current poetry deals a lot with fertility issues – it tends to reflect my personal life more. My fiction is more about made-up stories, not necessarily anything to do with my life.My third poetry collection Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car is due out in November from UK publisher Templar Poetry.

And you have an active family life, with two boys and now a young daughter. How do you manage to find the time to write? Are you particularly attracted to short stories because you feel that you can fit them into your life? Would you ever consider writing a novel?

It’s difficult to find creative time now because my daughter is so young (4 months) but I’ll get back to it soon. I’m busy promoting Nude anyway so that work always tends to interfere with actual writing.

I’m attracted to short fiction because it’s the form I most love to read and write – there’s something about its brevity and its emotional punch that appeals to me hugely. There’s nothing like a well executed short story to make you love reading, I find! I have written one and a half novels. My first novel You is due out in April 2010 from Irish publishers New Island, who also publish Roddy Doyle and the like, so I am thrilled about that.

Then you also edited the literary journal Southword, and you have been a judge for the Seán O Faoláin competition and the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. What is your relationship to the work of other writers? Do you find that critiquing helps with your own creative process?

I suppose I started life as an insatiable reader so I am crazy about other people’s writing. I am constantly amazed at how brilliant other writers are – how unique their stories, how clever and interesting their technique.

As for critiquing, I workshop other writers’ stuff in groups and I review, and I enjoy those things. I think I may have missed a vocation as an editor. Does it help with my own work? I’m sure it probably does in that I aspire to be as good as my favourite writers, so I work hard.

Most of my blog readers are not writers, and many are reluctant short story readers. If you were to recommend three short story writers for them to start understanding the pleasures of the short story, who would you pick, and why?

Raymond Carver – his stories are short, funny and un-nerving.
Rose Tremain – her stories are moving and beautifully written.
Manuel Munoz – his stories are feisty, emotional and gorgeous.

Which six living writers would you most like to have at a dinner party?

Annie Proulx, Colm Tóibín, Patrick Cotter, Anne Enright, Edna O’Brien and Zadie Smith – all bright and opinionated people. There would be plenty of feisty chat!

Which three dead writers would you least like to meet in the after- life?

Henry James – I imagine he’d go on and on and on...
Truman Capote – too self-focused and frivolously nasty...
Rainer Maria Rilke – ditto: too self-focused and frivolously nasty...

Nuala, thank you for stopping by, and I wish you much success with Nude.

Thanks so much, Petina, for being a lovely host. Next week, on the 13th of October, my blog tour takes me to the USA to Dawn Rennert’s blog, ‘She Is Too Fond of Books’. Hope some of your readers will join me there.

For more about Nude, Nuala and her other books, see her blog, Women Rule Writer. Images courtesy of Salt Publishing.