JOANNA CAMPBELL
Tying Down the Lion, Campbell's debut novel, is published by Brick Lane and was long-listed for The Guardian's Not the Booker prize 2015.
"Brilliant and original" (Jilly Cooper)
"A big-hearted, sprawling literary road trip with pitch-perfect comic pacing and memorable charcters." (Rachel Connor, BBC dramatist, prize-winning short story writer and senior creative writing lecturer)
"Cotswold writer Joanna Campbell has done well here for both the realistic manner in which the family dynamics are conveyed and for her interesting and unusual choice of backdrop for the story" (Cotswold Life magazine)
"Ms. Campbell takes the reader on a roadtrip from the UK to East Germany, yes, but we're really on a journey with a remarkable family whose story is exquisitely rendered. I am eager to read more novels in the near future from this perceptive writer." (Lady Rouchswalwe)
"This is a funny yet heart-breaking book. The characters are beautifully drawn. The hot, uncomfortable journey to Berlin in an old banger is hilarious, yet nerve-racking. It kept me gripped, laughing and crying in equal measure. It's wonderful. They are all people I feel I've met. The grandma is a terrific comic character - Mr Gunn meets Mrs Danvers via Dickens, but sweatier and smellier. I was right there, wincing at her every quip." (Yana Stajno)
When Planets Slip Their Tracks, published by Ink Tears, is Campbell's collection of prize-winning stories.
“Joanna Campbell’s range and scope as a writer is breathtaking. These stories capture the breadth of her unique talent in a collection of unforgettable stories.” (Joe Melia, Bristol Short Story Prize)
Tracing the fragile paths of people who desperately want to belong, Campbell catches her characters in the moment where they find themselves floundering. These are characters at the edge of their endurance, experiencing the moment when life threatens to tip out of their control. With a light comic flair, Campbell follows them through the twists and turns of their experiences. We see extraordinary events within mundane lives, and Campbell shatters your expectations in the award-winning stories that make up this collection. She beautifully captures the moment of implosion - a lame girl’s friends disappear on a bleak mountain, a schoolboy nurses a doll during a lesson, a babysitter is caught in her own web of lies, a mother watches her pram sink in the river, and a child discovers the truth about birth and death in the space of a day. Campbell makes you look at the world with a sharper eye, allowing you to see pictures in the flames, or faces in knots of wood. These stories are about people like us, carefully threading parts of their lives into a sequence, as though they were pearls on string. We meet them just as the thread is cut, scattering everything they know, and share their trials as they struggle to recover.