7 July 2021 Dodo Ink is delighted to announce a new publication. Dodo Ink has acquired UK, Commonwealth and translation rights to Loren Ipsum, the debut novel by French author Andrew Gallix. Gallix founded the 3:AM Magazine website twenty years ago, which is still flourishing; it was the first to champion Tom McCarthy and a host of other emerging writers. He recently edited the anthology We’ll Never Have Paris (Repeater Books) and has reviewed for numerous publications including The Guardian, The Irish Times and The Times Literary Supplement. Loren Ipsum settles in Paris to write a book about Adam Wandle, a reclusive author who has been hiding out on the fringes of the French capital for decades. Meanwhile, prominent figures of the literati are being kidnapped and “executed” by terrorists, who are convinced that bourgeois bohemians are the main obstacle to revolution today. Cryptic messages are attached to their victims.

DODO INK IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE A NEW EBOOK PUBLICATION: GARDEN OF FIRES, A LOCKDOWN ANTHOLOGY                                                      Marina Benjamin set up the website Garden Among Fires as a pop-up blog in the early days of the Corona virus, hoping to capture the wildness and estrangement of this fast-changing and desperately unstable moment, before its story was written. ‘It is not just that our shared reality has assumed new and uncomfortable shapes, but that our very understanding of morality, society and community is shifting’, she wrote on the blog, just as we went into lockdown in March. She invited writers to document their experiences, week by week, hoping their dispatches ‘while grounded in the unfamiliar fabric of our present daily lives, [would] also access a deeper level of reflection, humanity and humour.’ The blog ran for three months, including essays, poems and prose from a wide range of authors all over

Dodo Ink will be publishing an anthology called ‘TRAUMA: Art as a response to mental health’ in June 2020. Trauma will be an anthology of essays on mental health. Our essays will range from the personal to the political, from the raw to the reflective, exploring topics such as grief, insomnia, anxiety, schizophrenia, meditation, abusive relationships, work, post natal depression, and the relationship between madness and creativity. The anthology will be edited by Thom Cuell and Sam Mills. We are also working on a series of events and workshops to tie in with the publication of Trauma, to encourage collaboration and dialogue between the worlds of art and medicine. Our contributors include: Tomoé Hill David Lynch Rowena Macdonald Alex Pheby Azad Ashim Sharma Momina Masood Rhiannon L. Cosslett Marina Benjamin Tamim Sadikali Jude Cook Kirsty Logan & Paul McQuade Catherine Taylor Seraphina Madsen Yvonne Conza Emma Jane Unsworth Monique Roffey

It’s a busy time at Dodo Towers, as we get ready for the launch of our second novel, Wood Green, and make the final preparations for book #3, The Eleventh Letter by Tom Tomaszewski. Sam, Thom and Alex have been working like galley slaves, staying late into the night getting books ready for post, checking manuscripts for typos and filling in prize nominations forms, before stumbling out onto the streets of Soho at 5am, bleary-eyed and unshaven. Just like the old days.  As a reward, the Dodo has kindly allowed the team to venture out for a couple of nights of much needed relaxation. And they’ll be bringing some authors with them! You can come along and help them let their hair down at the following venues: Friday 23rd September: Wood Green book launch, at The Big Green Bookshop, 7pm with readings by Sean Rabin, Seraphina Madsen and Tom Tomaszewski

The Dodo team will be taking to the high seas on Thursday 21st July to celebrate the launch of our first title, the brilliant Dodge and Burn by Seraphina Madsen. We are taking over the lower deck of Tamesis Dock on the Albert Embankment, from 6.30 – there will be readings, opportunities to meet the team and get your books signed. We look forward to seeing you there! Northern friends, we have an event in the works for you too – keep an eye out for details. Get directions to Tamesis Dock here

I’m on an early morning train heading north through Kent as the sun rises on my right, contemplating another journey from over ten years ago, when I travelled to a little village near Avignon to meet the writer Christine Brooke-Rose. Since then, probably starting well before then, as I think I was jumping into some kind of a slip-stream generated by the interest of people like Stuart Kelly, Christine (I will use her first name as that’s what I ended up doing) has become rehabilitated as one of our leading experimental writers. I’m not entirely sure as I don’t really mix in the circles that would say they know; and although I think she’d be very glad to be thought of like that, to me she will always be a scream. Christine the experimenter and Christine a woman who made me laugh until it hurt. Christine Brooke-Rose. From the start

To explain the origins or inspiration for Wood Green, it’s necessary for me to set a scene. After graduating from an undergraduate degree in journalism, I spent most of my twenties working odd jobs in Sydney while writing two novels, almost back to back. Unfortunately, both of these books failed to find a publisher. So as my friends were getting on with their lives and moving forward in their careers, I was still broke, alone, and face-to-face with the reality that both works of fiction I had created were not going to get into print. With this in mind, and my thirties approaching, I made a conscious decision to radically change my writing process. I was enamoured with the structural complexity and ecstatic imagination of Jean Genet’s novels, and my ambition was to write a book that achieved something similar. I also wanted to create something beautiful. For a long time

Dodge and Burn began as a short story I left unfinished and put away when I became heavily involved in writing a road trip novel I was tentatively calling Jornada del Muerto after the fabled desert trail from Mexico to New Mexico. The short story was a recollection of a short story I had written when I was seventeen – an attempt at magical realism with a maleficent Dr. Vargas, an attack of killer bees, and a heroine who succumbs to insanity.       With Jornada del Muerto I had abandoned magical realism and was aiming for a post-modern cocktail infused with Beat, most notably William S. Burroughs and Kerouac, as well as “gonzo” popularized by Hunter S. Thompson, of which Tom Wolfe’s Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test was also a pivotal work in the genre. I had experienced the nineties in the San Francisco underground psychedelic trance scene which felt like a continuation and evolution of the cultural

As you may know, we have been running a Kickstarter here at Dodo Towers, in order to raise funds to publish our first three books with passion in 2016. We’re very grateful for your support; so far we’ve raised just over £5,500 of our £8,000 goal. This week, in order to say a special thank you, we’re offering a free book from our shelves for anyone who makes a pledge of over £10 and shares our Kickstarter on Facebook or Twitter (UK only). All you have to do is make a pledge, send us a DM on Dodo Ink Twitter with your details and we’ll pop a Dodo-approved book in the post for you. First come, first served: The Glass Room by Simon Mawer A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland The Great Lover by Jill Dawson The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer Station Eleven by Emily St John

Dodo Ink author Tom Tomaszewski talks about the ideas and inspirations behind his novel The Eleventh Letter I’m never sure if it’s a good idea for writers to start writing about their writing. A single sentence and I’ve already mentioned writing, in the abstract, three times. So somebody suggested to me that instead of writing about The Eleventh Letter I write something that connects with it. What a good idea: to shake the envelope and see what drops out. To begin with: The Aspern Papers. Henry James’s story has an inward movement, the kind I found myself repeating as I wrote The Eleventh Letter. A current places the past inside, not behind. Aspern’s papers are in a palazzo, in the hands of a lover, in a drawer, in secret, in a place behind a locked door. Why does the nameless narrator want Aspern’s papers? Why does he crave them? Somebody tells him: ‘One would

If this work seems so threatening, this is because it isn’t simply eccentric or strange, but competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction. Jacques Derrida This page is under deconstruction

Welcome to the Dodo Ink blog! We’re really excited about the reaction we’ve had since we launched Dodo Ink earlier this year: now, we want to let you know a bit more about us. The name Dodo Ink comes from Sam’s habit of drawing dodos on copies of her novel The Quiddity of Will Self at book signings, but it also has a deeper meaning. With advances dropping off, broadsheet coverage shrinking and ebooks on the rise, literary fiction is starting to look like an endangered species. We have seen excellent authors struggling to get published, as a ‘risk-averse’ industry heads for the middle ground. Editors have to justify themselves to accountants and marketing departments, and authors are advised to dumb down their material for public consumption. With Dodo Ink, we want to prove that there is still a passionate and dedicated readership for risk-taking novels. We will publish the sort of