Inkandescent
Inkandescent are committed to voices underrepresented by mainstream publishing—we discover & celebrate original & diverse literature to challenge the status quo.
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November 2021Address Book
by Neil Bartlett
The new work of fiction by the Costa-shortlisted author of Skin Lane. Within the pages of this address book you will find not only names and places, but lives—with their everyday griefs and joys, and their everyday braveries. A doctor revisits a formative sexual experience as he relocates in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. A dancing queen takes ownership of his life—and first flat—at the height of the AIDS epidemic. A photographer develops a defiant passion in a Victorian tenement. A civil partnership celebration lowers barriers in a high-rise housing development. A priest comes up against the Home Office. In the sixties, an expectant mother comes to accept a queer neighbour. Fifty years later, a widower comes to terms with the loss of a life partner. Seven different times. Seven different situations. Seven different characters, each seeking to feel at home—somewhere or with someone. Let Bartlett lead you surefootedly between lives and locations, through decades of change to find hope in the strangest of places.
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FictionOctober 2018The Pale Ones
by Bartholomew Bennett
Pulped fiction just got a whole lot scarier… Few books are treasured. Most linger in the dusty purgatory of the bookshelf, the attic, the charity shop, their sallow pages filled with superfluous knowledge. And with stories. Darker than ink, paler than paper, something is rustling through their pages. Harris loves to collect the unloved. And in helping people. Or so he says. He wonders if you have anything to donate. To his ‘children’. Used books are his game. Neat is sweet; battered is better. Tears, stains, broken spines – ugly doesn’t matter. Not a jot. And if you’ve left a little of yourself between the pages – a receipt or ticket, a mislaid letter, a scrawled note or number – that’s just perfect. He might call back. Hangover Square meets Naked Lunch through the lens of a classic M. R. James ghost story. To hell and back again (and again) via Whitby, Scarborough and the Yorkshire Moors. Enjoy your Mobius-trip.
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July 2017AutoFellatio
by James Maker
‘Apart from Lulu and herpes, everything is swept away eventually.’ Just one shimmering pearl of wisdom from popstar and polymath James Maker, whose worldly observations will (like herpes) once again be on everyone’s lips thanks to this remix of his Polari Prize-winning autobiography, complete with new chapters and never-before-seen photographs. If you hadn’t heard of rock bands Raymonde or RPLA – fronted by James in the 80s and 90s – you might be forgiven for mistaking AutoFellatio for fiction. But here fact is more fantastical than any novel, as we follow our hero from Bermondsey enfant terrible to Valencian grande dame, a scenic journey that stops off variously at Morrissey confidant, dominatrix, singer songwriter and occasional actor, and is literally littered with memorable bons mots and hilarious anecdotes that make you feel like you've hit the wedding-reception jackpot of being unexpectedly seated next to the groom's flamboyant uncle. According to Wikipedia, very few men can perform the act of autofellatio. We never discover whether James is one of them but certainly, as a storyteller, he is one in a million.
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CNUT
by Nathan Evans
As King Cnut proved, tide and time wait for no man: An AnthropoScene, the first part of this collection, dives into the rising tides of geo-political change, the second, Our Future Is Now Downloading, explores sea-changes of more personal natures. Nathan’s debut, Threads, was longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. His follow-up bears all the watermarks of someone who’s swum life’s emotional spectrum. Short and (bitter)sweet, this is poetry for a mobile generation, poetry for sharing – often humorous, always honest about contemporary human experience, saying more in a few lines than politicians say in volumes, it offers an antidote to modern living.
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FictionMarch 2020The Pharmacist
by Justin David
Twenty-four-year-old Billy is beautiful and sexy. Albert—The Pharmacist—is a compelling but damaged older man, and a veteran of London’s late ’90s club scene. After a chance meeting in the heart of the London’s East End, Billy is seduced into the sphere of Albert. An unconventional friendship develops, fueled by Albert’s queer narratives and an endless supply of narcotics. Alive with the twilight times between day and night, consciousness and unconsciousness, the foundations of Billy’s life begin to irrevocably shift and crack, as he fast-tracks toward manhood. This story of lust, love and loss is homoerotic bildungsroman at its finest.
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FictionMay 2020Kissing the Lizard
by Justin David
Justin David’s newly-released novella is part creepy coming-of-age story, part black-comedy, set partly in buzzing 1990s London and partly in barren New Mexico wildlands. When Jamie meets Matthew in Soho, he’s drawn to his new-age charms. But when he follows his new friend across the planet to a remote earth-ship in Taos, bizarre incidents begin unfolding and Matthew’s real nature reveals itself: he’s a manipulative monster at the centre of a strange cult. Jamie finds himself at the centre a disturbing psychological nightmare as they seize the opportunity to recruit a new member. Pushed to his limits, lost in a shifting sagebrush landscape, can Jamie trust anyone to help him? And will he ever see home again? This evocatively set desert gothic expertly walks the line between macabre humour and terrifying tension.
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Literature & Literary StudiesSeptember 2016Threads
by Nathan Evans & Justin David
If Alice had landed in London not Wonderland, Threads might be the result: each poem by Nathan Evans is complemented with a bespoke photograph from Justin David and, like Tenniel’s illustrations for Carroll, picture and text warp and weft to create an alchemic (rabbit) whole. On one page, the image of a floating frock, urban skyline spattered in its virgin hem, accompanies a poem about a city brought to blissful standstill by snowfall. On another, a poem about fleeing straightjacket suburbia accompanies the image of an alien costume, hanging on a washing line beside a school uniform. Spun from heartfelt emotion and embroidered with humour, Threads will leave you aching with longing and with laughter.
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Literature & Literary StudiesSeptember 2019Femme Fatale
by Polly Wiseman
a darkly comic drama about fame, failure & feminism 1968, New York. Nico, The Velvet Underground’s glamorous front woman, is waiting to shoot Warhol’s latest movie when her room is invaded by Valerie Solanas, writer of the radical SCUM Manifesto. A battle to the death begins: can these two iron-willed opponents become allies and change their futures? With women's ownership pf their stories and bodies still firmly on the news agenda, Femme Fatale draws parallels between 1960s feminism and today. It was first presented in Sussex and London in September and October 2019, supported by Arts Council England.
