Interview with Louise Powell

Dr Louise Powell is an award-winning working-class writer from Middlesbrough. She is the winner of the Sid Chaplin Northern Writer’s Award 2023 for her novel-in-progress and was jointly awarded the Peter Lathan Prize for New Playwriting 2022 for a one-act play. Louise is the author of the Coal Face collections of verbatim poetry, published by Redhills in 2023 and 2024. Her scripts have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and performed at nine theatres, including Live Theatre, The Customs House and The Tristan Bates Theatre. She has written short films and podcasts and her memoir essay was published in Kit De Waal’s acclaimed Common People anthology. Louise has a PhD in English from Sheffield Hallam University, and her research is widely published in journals and educational magazines. She also holds a Professional Greyhound Trainers Licence from the Greyhound Board of Great Britain.

Louise’s latest podcast project can be found here. And you can find out more about Louise and her forthcoming projects by visiting her website here. 

Interviewed by Kathy Hoyle

KH: Hi Louise. It’s a real pleasure to speak with you today. You describe yourself as a working-class writer. Although I also describe myself as such, I often find it quite a tricky thing to define. What does the term ‘working-class writing’ mean to you? 

LP: It’s a real pleasure to speak to you too, Kathy; thank you for having me! 

That’s such an interesting opening question. When I was on the Common People Professional Development Programme, Kit de Waal gave a talk about her writing and class identity. She said, ‘I’m working class, I feel it in my bones’ – and for me, the same sentiment applies to working-class writing. It’s writing which speaks to my life, whether through the characters, the turns of phrase or the setting. It’s writing with a truth to it; writing which doesn’t exoticise or denigrate the subjects. Writing which could be about characters who are in work or out of it; picking up a wage or receiving long-term benefits due to ill health.

I know that some writers, who grew up as I did in a family in receipt of benefits, like to use the term ‘benefits class.’ While I understand and respect that decision, I don’t use that term about myself because I strongly believe that class identity is about more than work. It’s also about values, communities; solidarity in the funniest and the grimmest of times. 

It’s about that feeling in the bones.

KH: Your work is fascinating, and it spans almost every genre, poetry, fiction, playwriting, podcasting and filmmaking. Do you have a preference for a particular creative outlet?

LP: I think it’s not so much a question of which form I prefer, but rather which form best fits the story to be told. If I’m working with a community, then I’ll think about forms such as verbatim poetry or audio, which foreground their voices and render me much less visible. If it’s a story which needs to be encountered in real time, I’ll think about theatre. More complex stories lend themselves to prose, while strongly visual stories need to be filmed. 

There’s so much to learn from working across different forms in terms of craft and audience. I like to have multiple projects in different forms on the go at any given time. I enjoy the variety and find that if one project gets stuck, immersing myself in a different projects in a different form really helps me to find the solution to it.

KH: My own research delves into oral history and regional dialect. I use oral histories to ‘capture’ authentic dialogue and use it in my work. You’ve also been involved in several oral history projects. Tell us about those. 

LP: I’ve recently worked on two substantial Arts Council-funded oral history projects: Dogpeople and Coal Face. Dogpeople uses oral histories to build a social history of flapping (greyhound racing at independent tracks) in County Durham. I grew up racing dogs at those tracks with my family, and the world has inspired a lot of creative work, including a novel which I’ll discuss later. Yet I wanted to carry out a project which allowed other people from within the community to tell their stories about the tracks. I worked the raw oral histories into an 8 x 20” podcast series. I also developed a Project Blog with Guest Writers, held a Community Exhibition at Wheatley Hill Heritage Centre and hosted Listening Parties, where participants could come together and listen to the podcasts.

Coal Face, meanwhile, uses oral histories to preserve the stories of coalfield communities in the words of the people are part of them. I take the raw interviews and weave them into a series of verbatim poems. Some of the poems tell an individual’s story, while others bring together all of the interviewees in order to present a wider narrative about such themes as the development of Washington New Town, the 84-85 Miners’ Strike, or what it felt like to work down the pit. These pieces have then been published by Redhills CIO in two books, in which my poetry sits alongside Sunderland photographer Andy Martin’s stunning portraiture. The writing and images have also been exhibited at Washington F-Pit Museum, and we’re due to exhibit new work at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens from 1 February – 15 March. Redhills will also publish a third book of writing and photography in time for the exhibition, and there will be a 6 x 20” series of podcasts featuring some of the oral histories, as well as a programme of community events.

One of the loveliest things about working with oral histories is getting to speak to such a wide variety of people. Each participant has a different – but equally fascinating – story to tell, and it’s a privilege to give them the space and the time to tell it. It’s also incredibly rewarding to see their enthusiasm for the finished outcome, be that a podcast, event or poem. There’s a great deal of trust involved in working with oral histories, and that’s something I’m always conscious of honouring when writing with them. 

KH: How important is a regional ‘voice’ to you and do you think publishers / theatre practitioners are becoming more open to dialect and regional narrative voices in stories?

LP: I’m certain that if I’d had access to regional voices growing up, I’d have found a much more direct path to being a writer myself. Pretty much everything I encountered was Standard English and middle-class, which meant that I didn’t know that someone from my background could be a writer until I was in my very late 20s. Even though I now work as a professional writer, I still struggle hugely with believing that I deserve to be in this space. So much of my energy has to go into battling anxieties about not belonging and not being good enough, and that’s energy that would be much better spent on creativity. I share this because lack of regional voices has a deep and long-lasting impact, especially when it intersects with other forms of under-represented identities.

My 70,000+ word dialect novel has only been out on sub to editors for a week, so it’s too early for me to comment on publishing. In terms of theatre, I think that practitioners are becoming more open to telling stories in the voices or dialects of communities, especially in co-created work. I do still see an imbalance of representation within my home region of the North East, though. There’s definitely a preference for Newcastle-based stories, with much less interest in plays from places like the Tees Valley. Part of this is down to the fact that there are no Tees Valley producing theatres (theatres which can fund and commission new writing) for adult work, but it’s also down to a perception that Tees Valley stories are somehow of lesser value. 

t's a point which was being made to me again and again while I carried out my research for a project called ‘First Stage.’ I spoke to writers, theatremakers and other cultural professionals in order to explore the consequences of a lack of new writing and talent development in the Tees Valley. Going back to my earlier point about the deep impact of a lack of regional voices, my research found that Tees Valley creatives took longer to find out that they could have creative careers, and experienced significant geographic barriers as they tried to build those careers. I put forward a series of recommendations to address the issues and am hopeful that at least some of them will be implemented. 

KH: You hold a Professional Greyhound Trainer’s Licence and Greyhound Racing is the theme of your novel-in-progress. Tell us a little about the novel and why it’s so important to you to tell this story.  

LP: My novel is a work of literary fiction which tells the folk legend of a former miner who’s a big name at the ‘flapping’ or independent greyhound racing track of Easington. It’s set in the late 90s and written totally in the East Durham dialect. The opening 6,000 words won the Sid Chaplin Northern Writers’ Award 2023, which led to representation by my lovely agent Elise Middleton at YMU Literary, and on 13th November 2024 we sent it out on submission to editors. I can’t go into too much detail about the content at the moment, but it’s a celebration of community and family, as well as an exploration of post-industrial masculinity.

I’m incredibly nervous about the book going on submission because I’ve worked on it for almost six years, constantly experimenting, drafting and redrafting in an attempt to improve my craft. This novel also means a lot to me because I was born into the flapping community, but there’s only one track left in all of the UK now – Thornton in Scotland. The loss of our independent tracks has been devastating for our community, and I wanted to write a book which is worthy of the brilliant people who were part of it. I’ve had so much encouragement from people within my community, as well as my immediate family and organisations like New Writing North, and I really, really hope I can repay that by getting the book published.    

KH: You work closely with a variety of both regional and national groups to support emerging working-class writers and have been incredibly successful yourself to have received funding and support for several of your projects. What advice can you give to emerging writers about where to find support, both financially and creatively?

LP: That’s an incredibly kind thing to say; thank you. In terms of financial support, I’d advise emerging writers to keep an eye out for small pots of funding, often known as ‘seed commissions,’ which can give you the opportunity to try out an idea. If you get the funding and find that the idea doesn’t have legs, that’s absolutely fine, but you may find that the seed commission can be expanded into a bigger project, which may be eligible for a larger funding pot. A seed commission can also be a good opportunity for you to try out working in a new form (e.g. audio rather than flash fiction), or to test a collaboration with another writer or creative which may then bear fruit in a longer-form project. 

In terms of creative support, I’ve found X (which is still ‘Twitter’ in my mind) to be a really useful platform to connect with other writers. Networks formed through professional development opportunities or creative writing groups can also be incredibly helpful, as you’ll often find writers at a similar career stage to you. Emerging writers should also look towards their regional literature development agency as a means through which to find support, whether that’s through career advice, workshops or opportunities to meet other writers. I feel very, very lucky to live within the area which New Writing North covers, as I wouldn’t have a creative career without the brilliant team there. That said, all of the literature development agencies are doing brilliant work to support writers in a difficult climate. 

I also think it’s really important for emerging writers to know that there’s a huge disparity between the ways that organisations and institutions behave towards you when you’re commissioned or funded. Some organisations are absolutely brilliant, paying you on time and treating you like the professional that you are, while others pay you late and make you feel much less valued. I don’t say this to be negative, but because when I was starting out, I didn’t know about this disparity – so when I was treated unprofessionally, I thought it was ‘just me.’ It wasn’t until I spoke to other emerging creatives that I realised it’s sadly all too common to be undervalued and to go unpaid. 

It's a horrible situation for any writer, but particularly for one who is part of an underrepresented group. We struggle to feel like we belong to the creative industries at the best of times, and when our time and roles are undermined, it magnifies those feelings of impostor syndrome and low self-esteem which so many of us struggle with. It also puts working-class writers, many of whom are already in precarious financial positions, into real jeopardy with regards to paying the bills or covering living expenses. All of this has a knock-on effect on our mental health, our ability to create our best work and advance our careers – but often, we’re so grateful to be given any opportunity in a competitive industry that we don’t dare to say anything. I know I didn’t, for a long time.

Until I realised that by speaking up against unprofessional practices, I wasn’t just advocating for myself, but for other writers from under-represented backgrounds. If I’m unhappy with the way that I’m being treated while working under commission or receiving funding, I’ll now explain why, and work with the organisation not just to resolve the issue, but to ensure it doesn’t happen again. So my best advice for emerging writers who find themselves funded or commissioned is not to be so grateful for the work that you’ll put up with being treated badly. You – and your craft - are worth so, so much more than that.

KH: Finally, could you tell us about some of the regional writers who inspire you.

When I was sixteen, I read D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, and it was like a match had been struck to light a fire inside of me that I didn’t know was ready to burn. It was the first time that I’d ever read a book which chronicled that fierce familial love which has underpinned my experience of working-class life, and did it in a way which was both poetic and prosaic. 

I saw something of my soul and my vocation in the first half of that novel, but I never caught another glimpse of it through A-Levels or all my seven years of University. While I studied modules on literature from the Renaissance until the present day, I was never set a text which showed the realities of working-class life that I could recognise. I’m absolutely certain that if I’d had a module which looked specifically at class, or even been made aware that such books existed, I would have found that spark before last year.

That fire was relit when I started reading the novels of Sid Chaplin. There’s such a mixture of strength and delicacy, of warmth and horror, in Chaplin’s writing, and his sense of voice is utterly remarkable. There’s a swagger and directness to the narration of The Day of the Sardine, and yet there’s a passage towards the end which is so raw and affecting that it gave me chills. I love how The Watchers and the Watched plays with the reader’s expectations of where the story will go, and I also love Chaplin’s short stories. They’re like sitting at the kitchen table, listening to an old friend tell a tale – and with oral storytelling being such an important part of my life and craft, that’s one of the highest compliments I could pay a writer.

Some of my other favourite regional books include Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole, as it’s one of the very few books that emotionally nails what it means to live below the poverty line, and you can tell that Greenwood was writing for his life. I’ve also enjoyed Jack Common’s Kiddar’s Luck and Thomas Callaghan’s A Lang Way to the Pawnshop, which remind me of stories I’ve heard growing up. I really admire Catherine Cookson’s The Gambling Man for how it plays with expectations of class and gender, and deeply appreciate how the dialect infuses TV adaptations of Cookson’s works. 

In terms of contemporary regional writers, I admire Benjamin Myers, whose novel Pig Iron made me realise that it was possible to tell stories in County Durham dialect. I also loved his book Cuddy not only for its stylistic ambition, but for the warmth and love which underpinned the whole work. I also love Kit de Waal’s beautiful, lucid, pinpoint-accurate prose, and deeply admire her for everything that she has done to help me and other working-class writers to develop. When Kit selected my memoir essay for publication in Common People, she set in motion a chain of events which has led to the development of my creative career, and I’d love to be able to one day pay that forward for other working-class writers.

About the interviewer
Kathy Hoyle’s work is published in literary magazines such as Northern Gravy, The Forge, Lunate, Emerge Literary Journal, New Flash Fiction Review, South Florida Poetry Journal and Fictive Dream. She has won a variety of competitions including The Bath Flash Fiction Award, The Hammond House Origins Competition and The Retreat West Flash Fiction Competition. She was recently longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.

Interview with Lisa Blower

Lisa Blower is an award-winning writer, academic and workshop facilitator. Hailed by Kit De Waal as the "natural heir to Arnold Bennett," Lisa is a champion of working-class literature and regional voices, often paying homage to The Potteries where she grew up. She's the author of two novels, Sitting Ducks (Fair Acre Press, 2016) - shortlisted for the Arnold Bennett Prize, the Rubery Award, and longlisted for the Guardian's Not the Booker - and Pondweed (Myriad Editions, 2020). Her critically acclaimed short story collection, It's Gone Dark over Bill's Mother's (Myriad Editions, 2019) won The Arnold Bennett Prize (2020), and was longlisted for The Edge Hill Short Story Prize (2020). 

She is currently working on her third novel, The Mongrels, and a follow-up short story collection, Renovations. Lisa’s academic work is focused upon her interest in working-class fictions, the short form, regional voices and autogeographical selves. 

Interviewed by Kathy Hoyle

KH: Hi Lisa. Your beautiful novel Pondweed charts the journey of two pensioners, Ginny and Selwyn, who tow a "stolen" caravan from the midlands to Wales. On the surface, it’s wonderfully quirky and funny but along the way both characters delve into their past, and come to terms with complex familial relationships, trauma and the importance of their own relationship. Tell us about where this idea came from, and did you feel you were taking a risk having two pensioners as main characters?

LB: So, there’s a story to this: my great granny Gladys was standing at the bus stop in Wem and gets chatting to an elderly gentleman. As they talk, they suddenly realise who the other is. Turns out that they were each other’s childhood sweethearts and she had thought Charlie lost to WW1. Gladys had married. So had he. Both were widowed. She was 84. He was 85. 

Charlie was of ill health and told Gladys that he was looking for some help around the house. She agreed to be his housekeeper having grown up in servitude and had pretty much cleaned ever since. He suggested she move in with him so that it would be more convenient and for companionship, but because they "didn’t want folk talking," they got married.   

I have always loved this story. There’s a sense of fate to it, happenstance, all those things we talk about when we talk about love (to quote Carver) and so I decided to reimagine it. Largely because I think there’s a lack of love stories in later life, but also because I wanted to write a story about "what if things were otherwise?" and that always means revisiting a past to understand a present. 

I was also, at the time of writing, commuting from Shrewsbury to Bangor University where I worked as a Lecturer, so was travelling the A5, A543, A55, and always following caravans. I’d occasionally see an exhibition caravan, all branded up, off to an event, and that got me thinking. What if they stole one and set off on this very journey, a road less travelled, their destination themselves rather than a place? I started thinking about Death of a Salesman and was also teaching The Great Gatsby at the time because it’s a profound study of class all tied up with the American Dream – characters travelling between places but never satisfied within them and always wanting and waiting for something else – and I started to think about Selwyn as a salesman but a salesman of "something" that exists on the margins; that we wouldn’t necessarily think about, but there was a driver behind why he did it. The product was cemented when I was in a garden centre with my daughter – she was only five at the time and she loved going to this one garden centre to look at the fish. That’s where I overheard someone selling a garden pond to a couple and I was fascinated. Pondweed was born.  

KH: Your short story collection It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s is a wonderful homage to working-class life in the Midlands. The stories are eclectic and yet somehow seem linked  simply because of this authentic sense of place and narrative voice. Have you always written in this way, or did it take you a while to feel comfortable and confident about writing with an authentic regional "voice"?

LB: The first thing to say is that I never set out to be a regional or working-class writer. I just wrote the stories I wanted to tell because I felt like I wasn’t reading them, and because I felt that I could give a voice to those stories that wouldn’t otherwise get told. I grew up with what I call a chattering of matriarchs – gossiping on doorsteps, up at Bingo, at the school gates – always telling stories but never about themselves. Alan Bennett says that he wrote Talking Heads to reflect the lives that were generally happening elsewhere, and I suppose that’s what I’ve always been interested in. Mainly because I know them: I heard them, I watched them, I was immersed within them. And for a long time, I heard my stories in a Potteries accent. Those chattering matriarchs and always mid-conversation. What I love about the short form is that you can do that with a story – you can start it mid-way through a conversation – you don’t have to reveal what happened before and you certainly don’t need to give it resolution and because these chattering matriarchs never finished a story, never gave themselves up to matters of self-enquiry, it felt all the more authentic to "walk away" at the end, and leave readers thinking about the story that wasn’t said but was there all the same; like they felt their story wasn’t worth the telling.  

KH: And following on from that, there’s such an authentic and vivid feel to the dialogue in your work. Have publishers always been accepting of the colloquial dialect you use, and is this something you consciously strive to include?

LB: It’s back to the fact that I hear the voices before anything else. It’s not always in regional dialect. Sometimes it absolutely is and is absolutely necessary, but not always. What I didn’t want to do was write every story with that same regional tone because that wouldn’t authentically reflect a place. There are multiple voices to any place because people move in and out and bring their voices with them. As for publishers, some have been exceptionally positive, others less so. Sometimes, the industry strives to seek out more regional voices to represent inclusivity and diversity and marginalisation, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near where we should be and especially not when it comes to the various English dialects. It’s rather homogenised. Irish and Scottish dialects have always been part of the publishing fabric, but northern accents, in particular, come with a preconceived criteria and that’s what I’m always trying to chip away at: just because there’s an accent does not mean the character must be shameless, a shyster, a sponger off the state, the lowest of the low. Yes, my upbringing was very working-class, and yes I had a Potteries accent that was ridiculed when we relocated to Shropshire, and yes, because I have had the opportunity of education and employment that has made me socially transcend my roots (in a way), I have rather lost my accent – unless drunk or angry or talking with that side of my family and then it’s right there again and I’m awful proud of it. What I try and do when writing dialogue is write a complete scene of it and then I add narrative and then I edit it down to the key exchanges so what is said says more.  

KH: You’re an advocate for working-class writing and a champion of working-class writers. Could you tell us why this is so important to you? Is it more than just a call for a levelling up on the publishing playing field?

LB: Absolutely. As I say, I never consciously set out to be a working-class writing or to write working-class fiction, however you might wish to label it. I just wrote what I wanted to and lots of my stories started semi-autobiographically so I could draw from that sense of authenticity and rawness that exists within an experience. It was only when my stories won national competitions that I started to get asked questions like, "So, you’re a working-class writer then?" and I remember thinking: what does that even mean? I did revisit the canon – mainly because I was interested to know where their voices ended and mine began – and then I did start to wonder where those other voices were in publishing now. I don’t mind admitting that it was a bit of a shock when publishers rejected my work with the words that they did – Sitting Ducks had an arduous journey because of the voice and its class subject and the word "pummelled" was used a lot. Then I met Kit de Waal and Kerry Hudson and we were all trying to do the same thing, were all frustrated with what wasn’t happening, and then Kit put out the call for Common People and all these other writers appeared on my radar. It’s been wonderful. But we need to do more. A lot more. Because what is happening is not enough, just tokens and gestures. 

KH: How would you, personally, define working-class writing? 

LB: I wouldn’t. It’s all writing.

But I do get that some writers are actively trying to reclaim the "label" as some writers will think it does the writing a disservice when it immediately confines the point of view. Granted, Sitting Ducks came from a place of defiance and belligerence because I was slightly fed up in being pigeonholed, so wrote about everything that infuriated me about the deindustrialisation of Stoke-On-Trent whilst watching other cities get rewired with major investment. And granted, academics - like myself - can provide a checklist of what working-class writing features – in terms of narrative characteristics – and talk endlessly about its perspective(s) and vantage point(s) and how this influences voice – as publishers will perhaps offer up a different criteria in order to "sell" books. But what we write about ultimately is people because of place.  

KH: You write both novels and short fiction. Do you work on both simultaneously, and do you have a preference?  What are you working on at the moment?

LB: I have just turned in my third novel The Mongrels which is a bit of a departure from my other works in that I’ve "gone rural." I’m now working on a DYCP-funded project of personal essays entitled Class Half Full, which is me working through some of these very questions(!) – a dialogue with the self maybe - as a way  to understand why my early Potteries childhood has gone onto to inform my writing in the way that it has and whether it is a matter of reclaiming the label (and especially when the UK has undergone such duress and division) or explaining why it should have no label. I’m also keen to reignite the humour and to show that being working-class was not all dank and drab and poverty-stricken. I’ve not really dabbled in non-fiction before, and I’m being mentored through it by Niall Griffiths who has always claimed that he had duty to write in the voice he was born with. If anything, it’s a pause in my writing to reflect upon what I’ve done and why I did it. And obviously, short stories because that’s the beating heart of my writing self. 

KH: What advice would you give to working-class writers who may be reluctant or unsure about writing in their own "authentic" narrative voice? 

LB: Just do it. Join us. The water is tepid, but we need more of us to raise the temperature!

KH: Finally, which other working-class writers do you admire or draw inspiration from?

LB: Alan Sillitoe and Nell Dunn. I adore them both. I based Totty Minton in Sitting Ducks on Arthur Seaton and read Up the Junction every time I need to rethink the cacophony of voice I’m trying to get across. Barry Hines turned my world upside down in secondary school and for all the right reasons. Kit de Waal is a highly competent writer and activist, and her support has meant the world; her flash fiction is dynamite. Kerry Hudson is wonderfully provocative and authentic and masterful with dialogue, and the extremely underrated James Kelman. Why Ken Loach has never adapted his books I will never know! 

About the interviewer
Kathy Hoyle is a working-class writer of short fiction. Her stories have appeared in various literary magazines including Northern Gravy, Lunate, Ellipsiszine, Fictive Dream and The Forge. She is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. She lives in a sleepy Warwickshire village and when she's not writing, she enjoys singing Dolly Parton songs to her long-suffering labradoodle, Eddie.