Julia Blackburn – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE AND THE HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE A journey told through stories and songs into Doggerland, the ancient region that once joined the east coast of England to HollandTime Song tells of the creation, the existence and the loss of a country now called Doggerland, a huge and fertile area that once connected the entire east coast of England with mainland Europe, until it was finally submerged by rising sea levels around 5000 BC.Julia Blackburn mixes fragments from her own life with a series of eighteen 'songs' and all sorts of stories about the places and the people she meets in her quest to get closer to an understanding of this vanished land. She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who, despite having lain in a peat bog since the start of the Bronze Age, seems to be about to wake from a dream...'This book is a wonder' Adam Nicolson, Spectator'A clairvoyant and poetic conversation with the past' Antony Gormley

To escape from her own sadness, a woman finds refuge in a past time. In a village by the sea she watches the lives of the inhabitants unfold around her. But the year is now 1410 and this is a world of devils and miracles, a world in which there are no clear boundaries between reality and the power of the imagination. A man's discovery of a mermaid washed up on the sand starts a chain of events that leads three of the villagers to accompany the enigmatic figure of the leper on a pilgrimmage to the Holy Land. The woman joins them and sets out without the certainty of ever coming home again.The Leper's Companions was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted a serious illness which left him stone deaf. In this extraordinary book Julia Blackburn follows Goya through the remaining thirty-five years of his life. It was a time of political turmoil, of war, violence and confusion, and Goya transformed what he saw happening in the world around him into his visionary paintings, drawings and etchings. These were also years of tenderness for Goya, of intimate relationships with the Duchess of Alba and with Leocadia, his mistress, who was with him to the end. Julia Blackburn writes of the elderly painter with the intimacy of an old friend, seeing through his eyes and sharing the silence in his head, capturing perfectly his ferocious energy, his passion and his genius.

'This is a raw, true book that evokes not just the life of the great singer Billie Holiday but an entire jazz era....' Mail on SundayJulia Blackburn's brilliant and haunting book is a life of Billie Holiday told in the voices of those who knew her. During the 1970s a young woman called Linda Kuehl, planning to write a biography of Billie, recorded interviews with more than 150 people. Kuehl died in 1978 and her book never came out, but her recordings survived to provide the raw material for this extraordinary account of the life of America's First Lady of Jazz. These same recordings have been used as the basis for the 2020 film, Billie.Billie Holiday is usually portrayed as a tragic victim of her own vices. These intimate stories give us a much deeper picture of her personality - we witness scenes from her chaotic childhood; we see her when she first arrives in Harlem at the age of fourteen; and we follow her through her rise to fame and into the notoriety that came so close on its heels. Billie's friends and lovers and fellow musicians talk about her troubles and her addictions, but they also have a lot to say about her warmth and her courage, and the ones who were really close to her understood that although she had a lot of men and drugs and booze in her life, all that really mattered was the singing.______________PRAISE FOR WITH BILLIE:'Gives a far more complete idea of Holiday as an artist than anything else I have read, GuardianJulia Blackburn's book gives a far more complete idea of Holiday as an artist than anything else I have read' Guardian'This addition to the tide of Billie Holiday books is extremely welcome. Nowhere else is the context of her life and work so vividly captured' Toni Morrison'Full of vigour and colour...Ms Blackburn's portrait of a unique artist is moving, revealing and quite unforgettable' Economist

Winner of the J. R. Ackerley AwardThis is the story of three people: Julia Blackburn, her father Thomas and her mother Rosalie. Thomas was a poet and an alcoholic, who for many years was addicted to barbiturates; Rosalie, a painter, was sociable and flirtatious. After her parents were divorced, Julia's mother took in lodgers, always men, on the understanding that each should become her lover. When one of the lodgers started an affair with Julia, Rosalie was devastated; when he later committed suicide the relationship between mother and daughter was shattered irrevocably.Or so it seemed until the spring of 1999, when Rosalie, diagnosed with leukaemia, came to live with Julia for the last month of her life.

Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Biography Award and the 2012 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village and they began to tell her their stories. Of how their village had been trapped in an archaic feudal system and owned by a local padrone who demanded his share of all they had, of the eruption of the Second World War, of the conflict between the fascists and the partisans, of death and fear and hunger of how they hid like like foxes in the mountains. 'Write it down for us,' they said, 'because otherwise it will all be lost.' Thin Paths is a celebration of the songlines of one place that could be many places and a celebration of the humour and determination of the human spirit.

Winner of the East Anglian Book of the Year 2015 Winner of the New Angle Book Prize 2017John Craske, a Norfok fisherman, was born in 1881 and in 1917, when he had just turned thirty-six, he fell seriously ill. For the rest of his life he kept moving in and out of what was described as ‘a stuporous state’. In 1923 he started making paintings of the sea and boats and the coastline seen from the sea, and later, when he was too ill to stand and paint, he turned to embroidery, which he could do lying in bed. His embroideries were also the sea, including his masterpiece, a huge embroidery of The Evacuation of Dunkirk.Very few facts about Craske are known, and only a few scattered photographs have survived, together with accounts by the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner and her lover Valentine Ackland, who discovered Craske in 1937. So - as with all her books - Julia Blackburn’s account of his life is far from a conventional biography. Instead it is a quest which takes her in many strange directions - to fishermen’s cottages in Sheringham, a grand hotel fallen on hard times in Great Yarmouth and to the isolated Watch House far out in the Blakeney estuary; to Cromer and the bizarre story of Einstein’s stay there, guarded by dashing young women in jodhpurs with shotguns. Threads is a book about life and death and the strange country between the two where John Craske seemed to live. It is also about life after death, as Julia’s beloved husband Herman, a vivid presence in the early pages of the book, dies before it is finished. In a gentle meditation on art and fame; on the nature of time and the fact of mortality; and illustrated with Craske’s paintings and embroideries, Threads shows, yet again, that Julia Blackburn can conjure a magic that is spellbinding and utterly her own.

The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that have accumulated around Napoleon and his sojourn here. It follows him through the eyes of those who lived with him, who guarded him, who managed only to catch a brief glimpse of him, alive or dead. It is also a personal account: a description of Julia Blackburn's own journey to St Helena and at the same time a journey through the private memories and associations evoked by the telling of this poignant and curious story.

In these five stories Julia Blackburn recalls the significant animals in her life and in so doing gives us a sidelong glance at the human members of her family, her painter mother and poet father. First comes Congo the bush baby, from the jungles of Madagascar via Harrods pet department. He slept in an old cap on the back of the door, and could leap about the room via the picture rails. Then there are tropical fish, tortoises, chickens, guinea pigs, foxes (the last three a combustible combination), pigs, and two very distinctive dogs, Julia's own dog, Jason, a cocker spaniel whose habits of servility and loyalty Julia's father, Thomas, was determined to undo ('He's worse than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, fawning at my heels!') and Henry, a Parson Jack Russell terrier that Thomas got after his divorce, a dog of great independence, dignity and forbearance, whom his master used to take mountaineering.This is a delightful book, wry, funny and wise, and unmistakably the work of Julia Blackburn.

A spellbinding memoir of a writing life‘I’ve been writing for most of my life, with hardly a pause, as if my survival depended on the process, which I suppose in a way it did.’Three islands, two abandoned houses, a remote mountain village; Napoleon in exile, old man Goya, Billie Holiday’s friends and lovers: Julia Blackburn’s writing has always moved freely across time and terrain, drawing her life and work into intimate conversation.In A Writing Woman, Blackburn reflects on a life shaped by books but also by places, friendships and fleeting encounters. With tenderness and unsparing candour, she tells of loves and losses, illness, ageing and building a home, assembling scenes from past and present that have made indelible marks on her life and writing.Above all, we see the sustaining power of her curiosity and attention – to art, to nature, to other living beings. A Writing Woman is the story of a life lived in writing and confirms Blackburn as one of the most intriguing and original writers working today.

A thrilling eco-magical adventure filled with ancient nature magic and heartfelt environmental mystery—perfect for fans of Hannah Gold and Sophie Kirtley.Twelve-year-old Belle has always been torn between her mum's faith in science and her Nana Willow's deep bond with the land. But when Whisper Valley's lake begins to die and the dragonflies—once gentle guardians—turn violent, Belle is thrust into a mystery that could destroy her home.A charismatic scientist promises a cure. A sacred healing ritual is sabotaged. And something beneath the earth is poisoning everything Belle loves.To save the valley, Belle must brave a blizzard, track an injured kite, and journey underground—guided only by a walking stick that grows with her and a friendship tested by fear. In the final battle between control and connection, Belle must choose which truth to trust… before the land's magic disappears forever.Longlisted for the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition, The Lost Dragonflies is a heartfelt, page-turning adventure about family, courage, and the living magic of the natural world.

In 1913, when she was 54 years old, Daisy Bates went to live in the deserts of South Australia. And there she stayed, with occasional interruptions, for almost 30 years. In Daisy Bates in the Desert Julia Blackburn explores the ancient and desolate landscape where Ms Bates says she was most happy. She fuses her own imagination and experience with that of Daisy Bates, unitl she seems to be recalling this other life as it it were her own.

In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted a serious illness which left him stone deaf. In this extraordinary book Julia Blackburn follows Goya through the remaining thirty-five years of his life. It was a time of political turmoil, of war, violence and confusion, and Goya transformed what he saw happening in the world around him into his visionary paintings, drawings and etchings. These were also years of tenderness for Goya, of intimate relationships with the Duchess of Alba and with Leocadia, his mistress, who was with him to the end. Julia Blackburn writes of the elderly painter with the intimacy of an old friend, seeing through his eyes and sharing the silence in his head, capturing perfectly his ferocious energy, his passion and his genius.

'This is a raw, true book that evokes not just the life of the great singer Billie Holiday but an entire jazz era....' Mail on SundayJulia Blackburn's brilliant and haunting book is a life of Billie Holiday told in the voices of those who knew her. During the 1970s a young woman called Linda Kuehl, planning to write a biography of Billie, recorded interviews with more than 150 people. Kuehl died in 1978 and her book never came out, but her recordings survived to provide the raw material for this extraordinary account of the life of America's First Lady of Jazz. These same recordings have been used as the basis for the 2020 film, Billie.Billie Holiday is usually portrayed as a tragic victim of her own vices. These intimate stories give us a much deeper picture of her personality - we witness scenes from her chaotic childhood; we see her when she first arrives in Harlem at the age of fourteen; and we follow her through her rise to fame and into the notoriety that came so close on its heels. Billie's friends and lovers and fellow musicians talk about her troubles and her addictions, but they also have a lot to say about her warmth and her courage, and the ones who were really close to her understood that although she had a lot of men and drugs and booze in her life, all that really mattered was the singing.______________PRAISE FOR WITH BILLIE:'Gives a far more complete idea of Holiday as an artist than anything else I have read, GuardianJulia Blackburn's book gives a far more complete idea of Holiday as an artist than anything else I have read' Guardian'This addition to the tide of Billie Holiday books is extremely welcome. Nowhere else is the context of her life and work so vividly captured' Toni Morrison'Full of vigour and colour...Ms Blackburn's portrait of a unique artist is moving, revealing and quite unforgettable' Economist

Winner of the J. R. Ackerley AwardThis is the story of three people: Julia Blackburn, her father Thomas and her mother Rosalie. Thomas was a poet and an alcoholic, who for many years was addicted to barbiturates; Rosalie, a painter, was sociable and flirtatious. After her parents were divorced, Julia's mother took in lodgers, always men, on the understanding that each should become her lover. When one of the lodgers started an affair with Julia, Rosalie was devastated; when he later committed suicide the relationship between mother and daughter was shattered irrevocably.Or so it seemed until the spring of 1999, when Rosalie, diagnosed with leukaemia, came to live with Julia for the last month of her life.