Multiculturalism has come under increasing attack in the past two decades. It began with a backlash against affirmative action in the US in the 1990s, and intensified after 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks in Europe. Now it’s routine to see multiculturalist excess derided and mocked. In this book, Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley do a good job of charting the… Read More
Delighted to see the first review of A Virtual Love today, on book blog The Innocent Flower. Here’s a snippet: A Virtual Love is an engaging, brilliant story capturing the almost impenetrable emotions and issues cropping up in a fairly new digital age. Blackman has made me take a long, hard look at myself and how I choose to portray… Read More
Wanted to say a big “thank you” to James Miller and Alex Wheatle for being among the first readers of A Virtual Love, and for providing some great feedback. Their words were truncated to fit on the cover, but here are the extended versions: A compelling tale, told from several perspectives, about the identity that people project about themselves in… Read More
I have a bad habit, sometimes, of generalising about what “writers” are like, mostly based only on my own experience. Last night I got a good reminder that there are many different kinds of writer. I was performing at an event called “Stand up for Books“, organised by the Society of Authors and the Society of Young Publishers. I was… Read More