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Common People
ByPublisher Description
Common PeopleCommon People is a collection of essays, poems and pieces of personal memoir, bringing together sixteen well-known writers from working class backgrounds with an equal number of brand new as-yet-unpublished writers from all over the UK.
Too often, working class writers find that the hurdles they have to leap are higher and harder to cross than for writers from more affluent backgrounds. Common PeopleCommon People will see writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.
We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others’ eyes – without new working class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives, or role models for working class readers and writers, literature will be poorer.
Working-class stories are not always tales of the underprivileged and dispossessed.
Common PeopleCommon People is a collection of essays, poems and memoir written in celebration, not apology: these are narratives rich in barbed humor, reflecting the depth and texture of working-class life, the joy and sorrow, the solidarity and the differences, the everyday wisdom and poetry of the woman at the bus stop, the waiter, the hairdresser.
Here, Kit de Waal brings together thirty-three established and emerging writers who invite you to experience the world through their eyes, their voices loud and clear as they reclaim and redefine what it means to be working class.
Original Pieces Contributed by:
Damian Barr
Malorie Blackman OBE
Lisa Blower
Jill Dawson
Louise Doughty
Stuart Maconie
Chris McCrudden
Lisa McInerney
Paul McVeigh
Daljit Nagra
Dr Dave O’Brien
Cathy Rentzenbrink
Anita Sethi
Adelle Stripe
Tony Walsh
Alex Wheatle
and more
Too often, working class writers find that the hurdles they have to leap are higher and harder to cross than for writers from more affluent backgrounds. Common PeopleCommon People will see writers who have made that leap reach back to give a helping hand to those coming up behind.
We read because we want to experience lives and emotions beyond our own, to learn, to see with others’ eyes – without new working class voices, without the vital reflection of real lives, or role models for working class readers and writers, literature will be poorer.
Working-class stories are not always tales of the underprivileged and dispossessed.
Common PeopleCommon People is a collection of essays, poems and memoir written in celebration, not apology: these are narratives rich in barbed humor, reflecting the depth and texture of working-class life, the joy and sorrow, the solidarity and the differences, the everyday wisdom and poetry of the woman at the bus stop, the waiter, the hairdresser.
Here, Kit de Waal brings together thirty-three established and emerging writers who invite you to experience the world through their eyes, their voices loud and clear as they reclaim and redefine what it means to be working class.
Original Pieces Contributed by:
Damian Barr
Malorie Blackman OBE
Lisa Blower
Jill Dawson
Louise Doughty
Stuart Maconie
Chris McCrudden
Lisa McInerney
Paul McVeigh
Daljit Nagra
Dr Dave O’Brien
Cathy Rentzenbrink
Anita Sethi
Adelle Stripe
Tony Walsh
Alex Wheatle
and more
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAbout Kit de Waal
Kit de Waal was born in Birmingham to an Irish mother and a Caribbean father. My Name is Leon, her debut novel, was an international bestseller and won Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year in 2016. Her second novel, The Trick to Time, followed in April 2018. She established the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Scholarship at Birkbeck University to help improve working-class representation in the arts. She lives in London.
Other books by Kit de Waal
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