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Lockdown Lit: video anthology expands

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Nothing in the Rulebook’s ‘Lockdown Lit’ project continues to grow, as award winning writers and creative entrepreneurs join ‘Rulebook Readings’ initiative

Online collective Nothing in the Rulebook has launched the second instalments in its ‘Rulebook Readings: Lockdown Lit’ series. The curated video anthology features videos from authors, artists, poets and creative entrepreneurs from within the Nothing in the Rulebook community, as people continue to share their stories of life under coronavirus-related lockdown.

“The response to our ‘Lockdown Lit’ initiative’ has been completely overwhelming and brilliant,” says NITRB co-founder, Samuel Dodson. “When we launched the project, we wanted to try and bring people together at a time when we were all being forced to self-isolate and stay physically apart. And so to see so many creative people getting involved and joining the conversation is beyond fantastic. There are so many people around the world doing all kinds of brilliant and creative things – and being able to provide a platform to showcase and celebrate this work is just what NITRB is about.”

Contributors to the second edition of the ‘Lockdown Lit’ series include award-winning author, Will Eaves, as well as best-selling crime writer Nick Quantrill.

Eaves and Quantrill are joined by screenwriter and fiction author Costanza Cosati, novelist and short story writer, Andy Charman, and writer and creative entrepreneur, Mark M. Whelan.

NITRB editor, Ellen Lavelle, said: “I think the most amazing thing about the project, for me anyway, is the space we cover. We have submissions from all over the UK but also from California, Mumbai, Milan. When you watch the playlist, one minute you’re in Nick Quantrill’s back garden in Hull, the next you’re in Lisa Marie Simmons’ home near Lake Garda in Italy. In a time when a lot of us are feeling quite isolated and trapped, it’s so lovely to be able step outside of your own situation and visit someone else’s, even if it’s just for a few minutes.”

Running ‘live’ over the course of lockdown, Lockdown Lit is a curated video anthology, with Nothing in the Rulebook inviting everyone and anyone to share their stories and join in the (virtual) conversation. The first edition of the series featured best-selling authors and artists including Mark Billingham and Paula Bowles – and anyone interested can get involved by submitting a video to the NITRB gang.  

Check out the latest videos below and find out more about the creative folk behind them…

Will Eaves is a novelist and poet. Murmur (2018), a fictional meditation on the life and work of the computer science pioneer Alan Turing, won the Welcome Book Prize last year. Broken Consort (Essays, reviews and other writings) will be published this autumn. Here, as part of Nothing in Rulebook’s Lockdown Lit series, Will reads two poems from his first collection Sound Houses – ‘Home’ and ‘Punk Revolution’.
Nick Quantrill was born and raised in Hull, an isolated industrial city in East Yorkshire. His trilogy of Private Investigator novels featuring Joe Geraghty are published by Fahrenheit Press with the fourth, ‘Sound of the Sinners’, due Summer 2020. Nick is also the co-founder of the Hull Noir crime writing festival. Here, he reads the first chapter of his current work in progress, a novel with the working title Cast No Shadow.
Costanza Casati is a fiction writer, freelance journalist and screenwriter, passionate about storytelling with women at the center. She is currently working on her debut novel and on the launch of a monthly podcast that focuses on book-to-film adaptations for millennials.

After a near death experience with a Box Jellyfish, Mark M. Whelan realised that his purpose in life was to become an author and an entrepreneur. He wrote two books and founded the Human Centered Leaders company: a professional coaching company that focuses on mental wellness and performance, based in Silicon Valley. In this video, he reads a reimagining of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in a time of cholera .
Andy Charman was born in Dorset and grew up near Wimborne Minster. His short stories have appeared in Every Day Fiction, The Battered Suitcase, Cadenza, Ballista and other periodicals and anthologies. He lives in Surrey with his wife and daughter. Crow Court is his first novel. Here, he reads an extract

If you’re interested in submitting your video to the Lockdown Lit playlist; you can visit the site’s ‘Lockdown Lit’ launch page. You can track the progress of the project by following us on Twitter(@NITRB_Tweets) and liking us on Facebook, or spread the word using the hashtag #LockdownLit

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  1. Pingback: Grow your creativity by going for a walk – nothing in the rulebook

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