Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 244
ISBN: 9781781727522
Publication date: May 13, 2024
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 244
ISBN: 9781781727591
Publication date: May 13, 2024
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
In 1984, Girlo Wolf is born into a world of pickets and poverty. Life on The Rock is precious, but growing-up is far from easy. Struggling with life-long mental health challenges and the repercussions of childhood trauma, she falls into a dark underworld of sex, drugs and alcohol.
With the stories of her working-class community driving her, she seeks social mobility through education and pursues her dream of becoming a poet. She channels her lived experiences into her writing and soon discovers that her words are a conduit to recovery, survivorhood and empowerment.
A gut-punching tribute to the reality of life in post-industrial south Wales, Gemma June Howell’s debut novel is an authentic portrayal of the intergenerational struggles of working-class communities and one woman’s journey to empowerment.
Gemma June Howell
Gemma June Howell is a multi-faceted writer, poet, activist, academic and editor at Honno, Welsh Women’s Press. She has performed at various events and festivals, notably The Merthyr Rising and the Morecambe Poetry Festival 2023. As Director of Women Publishing Wales – Menywod Cyhoeddi Cymru, Gemma is committed to providing a space to empower women in the publishing sector in Wales. As Associate Editor at Culture Matters, she edited the ground-breaking, Land of Change: Stories of Struggle & Solidarity from Wales (2022). Co-founder of the Cardiff Sisters of Solidarity, she co-organised the Sister March in Cardiff (2017) and is an advocate for representation and social equality in politics, publishing and the arts. Her work has mainly appeared in the Red Poets, with her dialect poetry featuring in ‘Yer Ower Voices’ (2023). Her work has also been published by Bloodaxe Books (2015), The London Magazine (2020) and she featured on Tongue & Talk for BBC R4 (2021). Gemma has published a volume of poetry, Rock Life (2014) and a collection of short stories Inside the Treacle Well with Hafan Books (2009). In 2023 she was awarded a PhD in Creative & Critical Writing which consisted of a hybrid novel featuring concrete poetry. An emancipatory undertaking, her research is focused on the disparities between social ontology and historical realism from a proletarian, feminist standpoint. Gemma has recently conducted university workshops delving into issues related to epistemic injustice and uncovering new creative spaces and voices in literature and art. Her work, often described as transgressional fiction, delves into the complexities of working-class identity in post-industrial Britain, leaving an indelible mark on both the literary and grass-roots activist spheres.
Photo credit: Gabriella Marie Lewis
“plenty of grit and gristle, and flavour too. a textured, compassionate read.”
lloyd robson
“An unflinching depiction of working-class experiences within a post-industrial landscape, The Crazy Truth is an artwork that pounds the senses with every beat. At its centre is Girlo, a ‘warman’, whose story we urgently need to hear.”
Elaine Canning, author of ‘The Sandstone City’
“An important and urgent piece of writing – vivid, visceral, gut-punching – like nothing you’ve ever read. [Written] so vividly and cinematically… Some sentences will stay with me – the epiphanies spreading out like sea anemones… oof – and the brutal descriptions of birth!”
Fflur Dafydd
“Fierce, furious and heartfelt, Howell’s The Crazy Truth explodes from the page with a rawness and a freshness that sucks the reader in. She’s a writer unafraid to take risks, and every page of this remarkable debut novel rings with the sharpness of her prose; the truth of her characters.”
Carly Holmes, author of ‘Crow Face, Doll Face’
“Here’s a literary voice blasting out at you, a writer of deep, deep authenticity with a real story to tell. It’s the tale of a young poet finding out that life is like pinball game, all flashing lights and obstacles, but thrillingly full of excitement too.”
Jon Gower
“This under class alliteration could have changed worlds for my people, to see a woman taking up space in these territories, these stories would have kept us in Education, would have made us see ourselves as more against a predetermined less, would have changed the literary landscape… Catching place, time and people, this Welsh Irvine Trezise prize heats up the landscape with this cultural crude oil and smashes it out the dark park.”
Rufus Mufasa
“Alive and full of energy, vital … like a slap in the face from someone you fancy.”
Crystal Jeans
“An omnivorous mind.”
Niall Griffiths
“A brilliant reflection on what it was to grow up Welsh and working class in the late 80s and early 90s, neglected by family and state, and a feverish celebration of a survivor, Girlo Wolf, for whom books and education are a passport out of the dark. Unflinching, vivid, compassionate, witty and funny; a testament to the joy and redemption of breaking the rules and breaking the mould.”
Rachel Trezise, author of ‘Easy Meat’
