Hay-on-Sky 2009 - Episode 9
In the penultimate episode of Hay-on-Sky, Mariella Frostrup is joined in the Sky Arts studio by burlesque star and debut novelist Immodesty Blaize, ghost writer Sarah Water talks about horror and lesbians (although not all in one sentence) and The Wire -creator David Simon reveals secrets of gritty story telling.
Giles Coren returns from his sheep shearing trip to make yarn and knit the results into a sweater. Or that’s the plan at least, success may be elusive… The very talented Paula Wolfe also drops by to provide great music.
Each day our guests also reveal their favourite summer reads. Immodesty Blaize’s favourite summer reads are Jake Arnott’s The Devil’s Paintbrush, Sarah Hall’s How to Paint a Dead Man and Julian Clary’s Devil in Disguise – we detect a bit of a theme here…
Sarah Waters’ summertime readings are Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn and Nicola Beauman’s The Other Elizabeth Taylor.
David Simon’s summer book choices are The Way Home by George Pelecanos, The Given Day by Dennis Lehane and The Financier by Theodore Dreiser.
If you’d like to read an extract of any of our guests’ books, you can take advantage of our literary test drive service with Lovereading
More on our guests
Immodesty Blaize
You know the burlesque revival has well and truly made it into the mainstream when Britain’s foremost exponent of the art – Kelly Fletcher, better known by her stage name Immodesty Blaize – is invited to the country’s foremost literary festival. But she’ll be keeping her clothes on in the Sky Arts studio (what can we say? It’s a family show…) as she introduces her debut novel, Tease…
Immodesty has been performing burlesque routines in London since the mid-1990s and has been largely credited with the renaissance that the art form has enjoyed in recent years. Her performances at celebrity, fashion and art events proved so popular that in 2003 she left her day job of producing and directing commercials and Immodesty became a full time burlesque sensation. Her live shows with the band Goldfrapp in 2003, a five-month West End show run in 2005 and a mentor role in the prime time Channel 4 documentary series Faking It finally brought the genre out of underground clubs and into a mainstream audience. She is known for her signature act with an enormous rocking horse, but has many other shows including with her giant telephone, a giant Spanish fan, a crystal bubble bath and oversized powder puffs. She was crowned Miss Exotic World 2007 at the Las Vegas Burlesque Hall of Fame, has appeared on programmes as diverse as Woman’s Hour and The Paul O’Grady Show, and in 2008 was invited to speak at the Oxford Union.
Her debut novel is hot off the press and is a semi-autobiographical account of a showgirl who makes good: “Tiger Starr has risen from nothing to become burlesque’s most sensational showgirl, but beneath all the glitz and the feathers, she’s hiding more than her modesty. As she prepares for the most important show of her life, it seems somebody is intent on exposing the dark secrets of her carefully guarded past…” Should you need any further encouragement to read it, try Elle magazine’s review: “Tease is a whirlwind of nipple tassels, glitter and besotted suitors. Oh la la!”
Sarah Waters
The popular author of her self-declared “lesbo Victorian romps” joins Mariella in the Sky Arts studio tent to talk about her life, her career to date, her Hay experience and her eagerly-awaited fifth novel, The Little Stranger, which is just out this week.
Waters’ most famous work is probably her 1998 Victorian lesbian novel, Tipping the Velvet (1998), which, having topped the bestseller charts, gained an even greater audience following its adaptation into a three-part TV serial in 2002. She has also written two other novels set in the same period: Affinity, which centred on the world of Victorian spiritualism and won the Stonewall Book Award and Somerset Maugham Award, and Fingersmith, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. As with Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith was also made into a TV series for the BBC.
Waters has various degrees in English Literature, including a PhD. Her work for her PhD dissertation on gay and lesbian historical fiction inspired Tipping the Velvet. Waters’ popularity in England became evident in 2005 when she received the highest bid during an auction where a real person’s name would be immortalized in one of her novels. The auction featured many notable British novelists, and the bidder, Marina Carr, had a modified version of her name featured in Waters’ latest novel The Night Watch. This book traces history back through 1940s London, following three lesbian women, one straight woman and one gay man, and the secrets, shames and scandals that connect them all, despite their different experiences. It was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and long-listed for the 2006 Orange Prize.
Billed as “a chilling ghost story”, Waters’ new novel The Little Stranger is hot off the press this week: “In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners – mother, son and daughter – are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.”
David Simon
If, like us, you are among the legions of fans of the slow-burning, wildly popular cult crime series The Wire, don’t miss its creator, writer/producer David Simon chatting to Mariella on today’s Hay-on-Sky.
Simon is an American author, journalist, and TV writer and producer. He worked as a police reporter on the Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years before becoming disenchanted with journalism and “because some sons of bitches bought my newspaper and it stopped being fun”. Instead, he turned to writing novels, which resulted in Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, which describes his year spent with detectives from the Baltimore Police Department homicide squad and co-wrote The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood with homicide detective Ed Burns, which chronicles a year in the life of an inner city drug market. The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street, on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Simon adapted the latter book into the Emmy Award winning HBO mini-series The Corner. He is the creator of the critically acclaimed HBO television series The Wire, for which he served as executive producer, head writer, and show runner for six years. In addition, he also adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into an HBO mini-series and served as the show runner for the project.
Following the trans-Atlantic success of The Wire, his novels have been published for the first time this side of the pond: join him as he chats with Mariella about his life of crime…
Paula Wolfe
Providing the music on today’s Hay-on-Sky is a singer-songwriter who, it’s fair to say, only a handful of dedicated music fans are likely to have encountered, but we don’t expect that to remain the case for very much longer. Paula Wolfe has been described as a “mesmeric guitarist and songwriter” who has written, recorded, produced and mixed her debut album, Lemon.
Reviewers so far have commended her ‘intelligent, literate lyrics’ (for example, her subject matter takes in Russian prostitutes working the hotels in Crete and joyriders and bored kids on the street corners of estates in the unfashionable quarters of Manchester), her ‘sharp and observant’ approach and her ‘sweet, sweet voice’. Time Out also noted that she is a rarity in recording and producing all her work herself: “In an age where producers get as much press coverage as the musicians they produce, a prominent female journalist recently asked, “where are all the female producers?” Well, perhaps like Paula, many of them are in their own studios, quietly honing their skills.”Join her under the Sky Arts canvas as she performs excerpts from her new album.
