A very quick note to share some happy news:
Noisy Valley will be published by Self Made Hero in May next year.
*** You can pre-order it here. ***
People who have been following this blog for a long time (and thank you if you’re one of the 9,000 odd who have) will know that Noisy Valley started off when I was in the Rhondda Valley visiting the Workers Gallery for an exhibition of my protest drawings, as a small project to record local people’s memories of protest.
It’s been quite the journey. First, from a ‘quick’ project, it expanded into a full-length series of first-person accounts.
Along the way I was shortlisted for the First Graphic Novel award, gained a couple of agents in the form of Corinne Pearlman at Pearlman and Lacey (literary rights) and Emma Topping at Viv Loves Film (production rights), and – thanks to Corinne’s unfailing enthusiasm – finally signed a contract with graphic novel specialists Self Made Hero.
I have been saying elsewhere that it is both a defence of the right to protest – a topic that is made human by retelling people’s true experiences – and a love letter to the people and landscapes of the Rhondda, this beautiful and always surprising community in South Wales.
You’ll likely have heard this before, especially if you follow a lot of other authors, but if you think you would like to buy a copy of this book, it really helps to put in a pre-order: if a bookshop sees that lots of pre-orders have been made, it knows there’s a demand for the book and gets stock in.
Thank you very much if you do, and I hope you enjoy it.
Myfanwy Tristram 