In the lead-up to the White Rabbit event at Verdant Brewing Co’s taproom in Penryn, Cornwall, Richard spoke to Matthew Shaw for Verdant’s Brewing Folk podcast, soundtracked by French yé-yé, My Bloody Valentine and Lush tracks chosen by Richard. Listen to the podcast HERE
You can also read Richard’s My Life in Beer piece for Brewing Folk HERE
Richard has contributed a new short story, ‘Kappa’, for the upcoming Vigilantia: what happens when artists and writers pay attention to Mogwai, to be published September 18th by Chroma Editions. Pre-order the book HERE
From the Chroma bandcamp page:
33 artists and writers respond to the music of Mogwai with a vivid collection of texts and mixed media combining essays, poems, painting, drawing, photos, assemblage, installation and graphic illustration. The result is a fascinating portrait as playful and mischievous as the band itself.
**Any profits will be donated to the Glasgow charity: Refuweegee**
Contributors include: Paul Youdell, Clare Archibald, Matt Healy, Darragh McCausland, John McDougall, Sapphire Goss, Martin MacInnes, Richard Milward, Colm O’Shea, Arun Sood, Isabella Streffen, Pat Barrett, Shelley Hastings, Martin Jones, Iain Sharpe, Lee Ashworth, Rik Rawling, David Banning, Rico Craig, Josef Minta, Rose Ruane, Brian McHenry, Wendy Erskine, Duncan Harman, Maria Sledmere, Susan Tomaselli, Noel Hannan, Dana Tommasino, Alister Black & Jonny Cannon, Joanna Kirk, Andrea Caro, Naomi Frisby.
Foreword by Darran Anderson
Product Details: A4 size, 76 pages, paperback, full colour
Published by Chroma Editions
Shipping out on or around September 18, 2023 edition of 250
Richard has written a piece on his drinking habits for the My Life in Beer series on brewingfolk.co, courtesy of Verdant Brewing Co, featuring Charles Baudelaire, Bellabrusco, Tetley’s Imperial, The Lexington, and much more. Read the piece HERE
Richard will also be appearing in conversation with Lee Brackstone at the Verdant taproom, Penryn, on Saturday 12th August, 6pm, with Jennifer Lucy Allan, Steve Davis & Kavus Torabi. Tickets are £5, available HERE
To celebrate the release of Man-Eating Typewriter, Richard has put together a night featuring creative comrades from Teesside and beyond (David Keenan, Maxy Bianco, The Danny Kebabs, The Word, Happy Birthday, Heather Leigh, Lee Brackstone) at Pineapple Black Arts, Middlesbrough, on Saturday 15th July.
White Rabbit Books & Pineapple Black Arts present
LUBRICATE REALITY WITH DREAMS
Readings from Richard Milward and David Keenan (plus Q&A with Lee Brackstone)
Screening of Maxy Bianco’s Brother Nature
Pop-up art & fashion from The Word & Happy Birthday (JJP & AN)
Music from The Danny Kebabs & Avalanche Party
DJs David Keenan, Heather Leigh & Lee Brackstone
SATURDAY 15 JULY, 7pm-late
£5 on the door
Pineapple Black Arts (access via back entrance, Johnson St), Middlesbrough, TS1
Books will be on sale from Drake the Bookshop
For those on low income, email pineappleblackgallery@gmail.com for free guestlist
Richard was recently interviewed by Mathew Clayton, alongside Luke Turner (Out of the Woods, Men at War), Will Burns (The Paper Lantern) and Nina Hervé for Rough Trade Book Club on Soho Radio. Listen to the episode HERE
An extract of Man-Eating Typewriter was read by Arthur Bostrom for BBC Radio 3’s edition of Words and Music, ‘Like a Butterfly’s Wing’. Listen to the episode HERE
.Cent Magazine have reimagined Novak’s array of outfits from Man-Eating Typewriter, painting the shapeshifting beastie as ‘an anarchist of fashion in the truest sense’
Taking their lead from Novak’s intros to each chapter, in which he lays out what gildi clobber he is currently wearing, .Cent’s illustrator Nhung Nguyen provides a collage-like interpretation of each look. See the article HERE
Richard has had a long friendship with .Cent. Back in 2007, the magazine was first to publish his short fiction in the UK - and in 2010 he guest-edited the ‘Intoxication’ issue, featuring contributions from DBC Pierre, Animal Collective, Faust, etc. See a sample of the issue HERE
White Rabbit currently has a BUY 3, SAVE 35% offer on all its paperbacks (including the reissues of Richard’s Apples, Ten Storey Love Song and Kimberly’s Capital Punishment)
Add any 3 eligible books to your basket and the discount will be applied automatically
See the full range HERE
Richard was interviewed by Anthony Cummins for the Observer, Sunday 19th March, talking about MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER, Polari, Royal Mail, Charles Manson, the Beat Generation, Mogwai and more.
Read the interview HERE
Richard’s new novel MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is out now on White Rabbit
‘I am an ugly man, a meese meshigena-omi, but a fashionable omi. And soon to be a molto famous omi. Lell my lapper.’
Set at the fag-end of the 1960s and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy London purveyor of pulp fiction, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is a homage to the avant-garde counterculture of the twentieth century. Told in Polari, it is the story of an anarchist named Raymond Novak and his plan to commit a ‘fantabulosa crime’ in 276 days that will revolt the world. A surrealistic odyssey that stretches from occupied Paris to the cruise-liner SS Unmentionable to lawless Tangier before settling in Swinging London, the book casts Novak as an agitator and freedom fighter – but, as his memoirs become more and more threatening, his publishers find themselves far more involved in his violent personality cult than they ever intended.
Constructed like a hallucinogenic cocktail of A Clockwork Orange, Pale Fire and Jean Genet’s jailbird fantasies, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is an act of seductive sedition by a writer with unfathomable literary talent and boldness. Wild, transgressive, erotic, and resolutely uncompromising, this marks the return of a writer who is out there on an island of his own making; a book that will be talked about, celebrated and puzzled over for decades.
‘Ingenious’ - The Guardian Books Highlights for 2023
‘Outrageous, audacious and shameless, Man-Eating Typewriter is a brilliantly constructed murderous lark. Like A Clockwork Orange adapted by John Waters at his most gleeful’ - John Higgs, author of William Blake vs the World and Love and Let Die
‘A daring, meandering, brilliant book… An exhibition of literary verve as well as a probing examination of morality within a sick society, Man-Eating Typewriter is a phenomenal achievement’ - Nicholas Harris, Literary Review
‘Filthy, deranged - and fantabulosa… Belly laughs abound… The sentences snap and sparkle… [It] deserves to be boosted by a prize or two’ - Jake Kerridge, The Telegraph
‘Richard Milward… writes like a demon, and has produced that rarest of all things on the modern bookshelf: a genuinely exhilarating entertainment. The linguistic invention borders on the dazzling… both laugh-out-loud funny and authentically disgusting’ - Neil Bartlett, The Guardian
Buy the MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER trade paperback direct from White Rabbit HERE
Buy the MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER audiobook (narrated by Richard Milward and Marc Graham) from Audible HERE
Richard was interviewed by Ben Lindner for the mighty Beyond the Zero podcast this week, talking about MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER, as well as the gateway books that have influenced his reading and writing, and his desert island books.
Listen to the podcast on Spotify HERE