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Tuesday, 26 August 2008 |
This is me, with my journalist mum’s wartime typewriter, on which I learned to type before I even learned to write. She carted it all the way round the Middle East with her, and passed on to me the writing bug. I fought it for ages, making a career in the Education Nationale instead—I’ve lived in France for over 30 years—but started writing too in the 90s, fiction, journalism, travel writing, poetry, essays. I’ve just spent a couple of years shut away editing one of Mum’s unpublished manuscripts, so when the French News bug hit last summer, it was a wonderful excuse to put a planned novel on the back burner and rush about with a camera meeting people.
Reporting from Palestine 1943 – 44 by Barbara Board - my mum’s book, -
is just out with Five Leaves Publications. I found the manuscript
under her bed when I drove over from France to clear her flat when she
died in 1986. She’d kept very quiet about this, it was a total surprise
to me. I’ve been working on it on and off ever since. Now, with all
eyes again on the Middle East, it has suddenly became easier to find a
publisher, and Ross Bradshaw, who had previously published my poetry,
decided to bring it out.
You can read more about it, as well as my other writing on my website:
http://jacqueline.karp-gendre or from Five Leaves www.fiveleaves.co.uk
I have two readings coming up: one in Paris at 7 pm on 22 September at
Shakespeare & Co, 37 rue de la Bûcherie, (opposite Notre Dame) and
one—a lunch followed by a talk— in the Deux Sèvres, organised for me by
French News correspondent Beryl Brennan, mid-October (watch the What’s
On Deux Sèvres column on the Poitou-Charentes pages for details).
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