Republic of Consciousness Prize 2022 shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. 2022-03-29 . Retrieved 2022-05-12.

We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff is an innovative and critically British novel, taking issue with the dream of national belonging. Set on the Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England, it collides literary aesthetics with contemporary working-class cultures and attitudes (B.S. Johnson and Reebok classics), works with themes of empire, embodiment and resistance, and interrogates autobiographical material including the queer migrant experience. AB - We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff is an innovative and critically British novel, taking issue with the dream of national belonging. Set on the Isle of Wight, a small island off the south coast of England, it collides literary aesthetics with contemporary working class cultures and attitudes (B.S. Johnson and Reebok classics), works with themes of empire, embodiment and resistance, and interrogates autobiographical material including the queer migrant experience.Homage/reference to B. S. Johnson and experimental literature. In particular, House Mother Normal is a character here, albeit in a different guise to Johnson’s. The lypard is ranging the foyer at night (a sinister presence, a danger). It has a massive tear in its eye, it tears through the foyer.” To my interest, both of these elements (which I initially may have regarded as criticisms) are dwelt on and examined and explained in the thesis as intrinsic to their situation and to their new literary concept. Isabel Waidner: "The British novel reproduces white middle-class values and aesthetics" ". New Statesman. 2021-11-03 . Retrieved 2021-11-24.

In a special issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly from 2018, Halberstam and Nyong’o collected a variety of texts on wildness that attempted to “think beyond the colonial epistemes in which wildness indicates uninhabitable space and unknowable peoples all at once” and instead ask “what is wildness for those who have been forcibly gathered under its sign?” It’s clear that wildness is a historically charged term. But can it help us reach for alternative futures? Though what’s considered wild might differ depending on cultural contexts, the wild that Halberstam and Nyong’o theorize seems to be situated in the tension between a (post)modern, western subject of “civilization” and its “wild” Others. Julietta Singh reminds us, via Edward Said’s classical analysis, that the wild/civilized binary was/is situated at the very center of colonial missions. Still, Singh points out “how one colonial errand gives rise to the advent of another and … how this relay might be perverted and redirected toward the decolonial wild.” If, as Sylvia Wynter also argues, the modern subject, or “Man,” is dependent on a binary of rational/subrational, to turn wild might mean to reject the supremacy of the western rationale. The wild move is then a kind of anarchistic impulse, a reaching for other worlds beyond white, neoliberal patriarchy. Halberstam and Nyong’o argue that “If we refuse to access all that wildness names and has named, we will be acceding to a monologue of civilization with its narrative alibis of humanity.” Embedded within wildness’ possibility to challenge a certain world project, then, are the histories of violence of that very project. Some of what is at stake can be considered through the figure of Waidner’s lypard.Waidner, Isabel (2021-06-21). "An Alternative Art History of the 1990s". Frieze. No.220. ISSN 0962-0672 . Retrieved 2021-11-24. I read Gaudy Bauble last year, and this offering from Isabel Waidner is a second extract from their thesis (available online) explaining their positioning as part of a “new generation of interdisciplinary queer British writers” . It might be because I’ve had some practice with Gaudy Bauble, but this new book is actually more accessible. That said, America has longer traditions of innovative queer/trans writing and a new press called Cipher Press is publishing interesting stuff, like Large Animals by Jess Arndt. This is the kind of writing I’m excited about and it’s coming through in the UK now – Shola von Reinhold [author of L ote, winner of this year’s Republic of Consciousness prize] is obviously part of that. Corey Fah is a cross between dark fable, “sonsense nong” and Kafkaesque neon rainbow, about as far as you can get from mainstream contemporary British fiction. Whether we’re drawn to Waidner’s bold, feisty work or not, its presence in today’s literary limelight is a cause for celebration. At a time when the dangers of zero-sum thinking are blatantly obvious to us all, it feels essential to engage with literary work that counters individualistic subjectivity and brings a fresh lens to our troubled world.

Class, queers & the avant-garde in new British writing with Caspar Heinemann & Isabel Waidner | | atractivoquenobello". www.aqnb.com . Retrieved 2021-11-24. Which reminded me of this Daily Mail story from several years ago (not referenced as such in the novel): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti... The most popular choice of trainers among burglars are Reebok Classics, according to a study which examined footprints left at crime scenes.Leopards in the wild use their strength to drag heavy carcasses up very tall trees. No reason why our lypard shouldn’t exist in a vertical dimension – A vertical dimension?! Seriously? Is nothing sacred (PARALLEL)?

In your first novel , Gaudy Bauble , someone called Belá writes “awkwardgarde fiction”. Is that how you would describe your work?Lypard lypard - your eyes are tearing. Are you diamond? Probably not! We’re made of diamond stuff, that is, harder stuff than you’re made of. The American “ New Narrative” movement is the avowed influence, and Diamond (a Print on demand publication) has Dodie Bellamy, a New Narrative founder, providing a glowing endorsement. There is some clever, and innovative writing, but in my personal opinion this is lost in a polemical onslaught. Expat identities: a queer migrant's reinvention abroad". propertylistings.ft.com . Retrieved 2021-11-24. Someone help me please with the interpretation of this! I do not eat chocolate. Maybe that is why i did not get the wit and beauty of this particular metaphor.