Books on Tyne part 2

Closing events 30 November 2024

I don’t think I’d been inside the Lit & Phil (Newcastle’s nineteenth-century Literary and Philosophical Society building) since my first year living in the Toon. It was good to make more effort to go for two of the closing events for the Books on Tyne festival: a double-bill of novels based on research on the Newcastle Witch Trials of 1650.

A. D. Bergin spoke first about his historical crime fiction The Wicked of the Earth and gave a fascinating talk on what all is known about Britain’s biggest witch hunt, which gets a lot less attention than the Lancashire or Scottish witch trials, even though twenty-nine women and one man were put on trial at once. Twenty-seven were found guilty, and sixteen were sent to the gallows - an unusually small percentage. He revealed the ways the hunt was entwined with greed, corruption and fraud as Tyneside rose to power and sophistication two centuries before the industrial revolution. Many of the known names of the accused are familiar in these parts - Armstrong, Fenwick, Madison - and with a much smaller, concentrated population.

The English Civil War had been raging since 1642, leaving many widows who had inherited land and businesses as sole heirs after the deaths of their husbands and sons. This was also a time when England was asserting its colonial heft with the Highland clearances and landgrabs pushing out half the population of Ireland. Transatlantic trade was booming, driven by taking people as property. On home soil, labourers were fighting for their rights - largely in the coal industries of the North East. At the same time, dominant Calvinist Christians were imposing their stringent moral standards on everyone, and having outspoken, available women owning property and actively participating in society simply would not do.

This is all just some of the extensively researched backdrop to Bergin’s book, which sees fiction fill in blanks where information becomes scarce. Those hanged in this particular instance on the Town Moor and whose remains lie unmarked near St Andrew’s Church were only the few who were named out of potentially hundreds we know nothing about. Apartently there is a memorial on the way marking this disturbing part of history in the region and across Britain.

Next up was Sue Reed talking about her novel The Rewilding of Molly McFlynn and daring to be different. It is a contemporary coming-of-age story centring on fifteen-year-old Molly who befriends the imagined daughter of Ann Watson - one of the victims of the Newcastle Witch Trial - who moves through a time portal by the Tyne. As well as the witch hunt, the story channels aspects of Reed’s life and family, including her interest in seasonal eating and living off the land, and her years spent as a special needs teacher working with sensory communication.

Reed had reached a point in her life where she was grappling with her identity. In a story broadly similar to mine, she suffered a career-ending breakdown and turned increasingly to creative pursuits - writing and making from scraps (if you’ve followed me for a while you’ll know this is an uncanny similarity). What Reed did differently from me was to take the plunge and apply to do the creative writing MA at Newcastle University (by the time I considered that as an option I’d run out of money, and unlike Reed I cannot get a loan because I’ve already done a master’s, even though it was self-funded). Unfortunately for Reed, her degree began in 2019, meaning that weeks into semester 2 teaching and learning had to suddenly and chaotically shift online, and this too was woven into Molly’s circumstances and isolation.

Reed talked about those accused of being witches as simply being a bit different, a bit beyond expectations. Being poor and single, speaking out against dreadful labour conditions and puritanical mores, and disagreeing with the church were all suspicious. If a woman inherited property, jealousy and greed rose up in her neighbours and she was soon put on trial - the test in these instances involving being stabbed, perhaps with a retractable blade, to see if they bled, and if they didn’t they were to be hanged.

Reed spoke of the ways she grew up feeling different and continued to be othered throughout adulthood, which inform Molly’s intitial characterisation and her development as she moves increasingly towards climate and ecological activism. I can begin to empathise - I’m currently the house weirdo for giving a damn about the recycling and having a constantly dysregulated nervous system.

I then trundled up the hill to City Library for the festival’s closing event: a panel discussion with the Northern Fiction Alliance and Opt Indie Books, starting as we began with hosting from James Routledge. On the panel were Rose Drew and Alan Gillott from Stairwell Books, Isabelle Kenyon from Fly on the Wall Press, George Forster of Comma Press, and author Sammy Wright.

As I reach the end of what I feel I can do on my own with my manuscript, learning more about the landscape of independent publishing in the North of England was very timely. I feel somewhat validated for taking the time to make my work as good as I can get it, and for slowly trying to develop more of a consistent presence on Instagram (I’m following advice from my podcasting days and focusing on being good at one and the one I used to be good at was the bird and now it’s in internet hell, so Instagram it is; I know Meta’s no better but I can’t face making yet another new profile and joining Bluesky or even Threads).

The panel spoke of the challenges in the book industry, including the financial pressures of raised paper prices, retail prices not rising with inflation, the market domination of Amazon and Waterstones, and the workarounds indie presses engage in to reach buyers and readers. They emphasised the importance of book festivals, events at local bookshops and libraries and all kinds of networking and connection, and the edge authors can have if they’re prepared to turn up and speak about their work and engage on social media - a duanting prospect for most writers who are chronic people-averse imposter-syndrome-y introverts [insert Munch’s Scream face].

There’s loads more, but I’ll maybe come back to those points another time. I managed to chat briefly to each of the press representatives and had great advice from Rose - start going to open mic nights. With all the fuss and bother I had completely forgotten about this. At the launch for Uncommonalities V, a standup comedian I met (Marigold Lately) suggested I do that, and I found at least one where you can try out prose. Rose told me of others to look into too. So that’s what I might inflict on people next. Why should my tortures be confined to Substack when there’s a captive audience down the hill from my doorstep?