The Writers of Wales Database

BLANK, JANE

Email: jane.blank@talk21.com
Website: http://www.jane-blank.info/
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Jane Blank is a qualified teacher of English and Drama with extensive experience of teaching both adults and young people. She holds an MA (Dist.) from Cardiff University in the Teaching and Practice of Creative Writing and has been published in a range of genres. At present she teaches in a Welsh language secondary school and continues to devise and run weekend ARCA courses on many aspects of writing and literature. She has worked for Farncombe Estate Centre in the Cotswolds and The Hill college in Abergavenny. This year’s courses for the Hill include ’Write your Life’ and ’Write your Novel’ as well as tuition on how to prepare a manuscript for, and to achieve, publication. See www.thehillabergavenny.co.uk for more details. She is a fluent Welsh speaker.

Jane’s work has won prizes and awards, and been featured in numerous magazines and anthologies including Planet, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry Quarterly Review, The Western Mail, Big Issue, Observer Magazine and The Independent. In 2003 she launched her first collection of Poetry, Naked Playing the Cello with The Collective Press in Berlin. More recent publication includes an autobiographical piece for Honno Press’ award winning anthology Laughing Not Laughing. Her first novel, The Geometry of Love for Y Lolfa has attracted a lot of media attention. Set in 1980s Sheffield and the Muslim community of Lille, Northern France, it is selling well.

As a performer Jane works mostly with classical music, poetry and theatre, enjoying in particular contemporary and Jacobean drama. Recent projects include directing and acting in productions of Purcell’s ‘Arthur’ and Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Trial by Jury’. Jane is a Member of Academi.

Reviews:

"…Jane’s courses are ’white-hot inspiration’…" 
Student David Radley at Farncombe

With respect to The Geometry of Love (Y Lolfa, 2008):

“…the funniest, sexiest novel I’ve read in a long time…” 
 Norman Schwenk


Selected Publications:
Naked Playing the Cello (The Collective Press, 2003)
The Geometry of Love (Y Lolfa, 2008)

Contributed to:
Laughing Not Laughing (contributor) (Honno, 2004)
The Final Theory (contributor) (Broadleaf, 2006)



The Geometry of Love (Y Lolfa, 2008)

Set in Sheffield in the 1980s where the New Romantics vie with the Northern Soulers for control of the clubs and fashion scene, this novel deals with clashes of culture in pre-9/11 Britain. The miners are on strike, Thatcher’s in power, but all this means nothing to two teenage girls looking for kicks, and their one aim - to lose their virginity!

The Geometry of Love deals with the anxiety of being a Welsh outsider in Sheffield in the 1980s, as well as the fascination the West has with eastern culture and Islam. The influence a Muslim friend has on two young girls in their quest for the good things in life is revealing and is based on some of the author’s childhood.

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