1953 in My Father’s House IX - The Rough Patch & the Wild Patch
Boarding school was a foreign country: the distance from Brighton seemed equal to the distance from Cape Town. As Margaret Atwood...
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Christine Cohen Park
Christine Cohen Park
Nov 261 min read
1953 in My Father’s House VIII - What Is It to be a True Socialist? Further Education of a Young Mind
The day for boarding school arrived. We set off straight after breakfast in my father’s highly-polished racing green Bentley. Griff, with...
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Christine Cohen Park
Nov 262 min read
1953 in My Father’s House VII - The Jive and the Tote
Carole came to tea. Mrs Ash and Fay decided that we would have it out in the summerhouse – if the children were to make a mess, then not...
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Christine Cohen Park
Nov 261 min read
1953 in My Father’s House VI - Last Weekend Before School
Dear Readers, this is my continuing memoir of arriving from South Africa, aged ten and a half, to live with my father (who I barely knew)...
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Christine Cohen Park
Nov 181 min read
1953 in My Father's House - V The Fight and its Aftermath
The fight took place one January afternoon with a cold wind blowing off the sea. When it bit into us you could smell the salt. There were...
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Christine Cohen Park
Sep 181 min read
1953 in My Father’s House - IV Feeling My Way
Other writers talk of fully entering the world of adult literature and consuming volumes from public libraries, or should they be lucky...
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Christine Cohen Park
Jun 41 min read
I'll be giving a reading from my new novel at Needlewriters, Lewes on 13th June
The next Needlewriters evening will be on Thursday 13th June 2024, featuring Charlotte Gann (poetry), Christine Cohen Park (prose),...
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Christine Cohen Park
May 191 min read
1953 In My Father's House - III Doors Opening and Closing
Breakfast arrangements in my father’s house were a surprising affair. The first person to arrive was his youngest brother, my uncle...
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Christine Cohen Park
May 121 min read
Here's the second instalment of my memoir - 1953 In My Father's House. II Introducing a new character
So there I was, on the threshold of my father’s house in the first days of 1953. It is situated on a wide avenue that divides Brighton...
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Christine Cohen Park
May 83 min read
In conversation with Sorrel Pitts, the author of Broken Shadows, on her publishing journey
The author Sorrel Pitts came to my attention back in February, when she wrote an article for BookBrunch about her thirty-year journey to...
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Christine Cohen Park
Apr 221 min read
Read the beginning of Christine's Memoir - 1953 In My Father's House
One well-trodden route a writer may take while awaiting answers from publishers and agents is, get on with the next book. A strategy...
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Christine Cohen Park
Apr 161 min read
Christine is giving a reading from her new novel Bye Bye Apartheid Road
Christine is giving a reading from her new novel Bye Bye Apartheid Road at the next Needlewriters event: 6.30 on June 13th, at the John...
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Christine Cohen Park
Apr 161 min read
Anita Mason's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography written by Christine
Mason, Anita Frances (1942–2020), novelist, journalist, and essayist, was born at Bristol Maternity Hospital, 50 Southwell Street,...
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Christine Cohen Park
Mar 243 min read
How Sharing Stories Can Save Lives: The importance of oral storytelling in a crisis
“In a chaotic world acquiring books is a balancing act on the edge of the abyss.” Wrote Walter Benjamin in Unpacking My Library. The same...
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Christine Cohen Park
Mar 141 min read
My Slushpile Odyssey IV: The Waiting Game
You send your book out into the world – the world of agents and publishers – and then you are in the waiting game. One of the pleasures...
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Christine Cohen Park
Mar 21 min read
Check Adrienne Thomas and Harlan Cockburn's Creageivity podcast interview with Christine
Creageivity 14 - with Christine Cohen Park ......... https://www.buzzsprout.com/2160581/episodes/14606637
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Christine Cohen Park
Feb 204 min read
More Room at the Top
Just published in Writing Magazine March 2024 For us older writers – I’m 81 – an article by Amelia Hill in the Guardian in the early...
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Christine Cohen Park
Feb 194 min read
Slushpile Odyssey 3 - Three Rules
‘There are three rules for writing a novel, unfortunately no one knows what they are,’ Somerset Maugham is credited with saying. Maugham...
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Christine Cohen Park
Feb 114 min read
Slushpile Odyssey – Awaiting Answers
I have submissions out now, with a bit of an introduction, at least a name and a letter on my behalf, so not exactly freefall – and I am...
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Christine Cohen Park
Jan 254 min read
Will 'Distilled Wisdom' Work on my Slushpile Odyssey?
Last year I read a heartening article in the Guardian claiming that women into their seventies and even eighties are hot property when it...
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