Brindley Hallam Dennis has won awards and prizes for his writing in Scotland and England. His stories have been published, broadcast and performed. He lives in Cumbria within sight of Criffel, Skiddaw, and Cross Fell and a sliver of Solway Firth. Writing under the name Mike Smith he has published poems and essays, and his play Smokes, a mime with words, was produced by The Swallow Theatre in S.W.Scotland, and as part of the Sydney Shorts festival, 2009. He holds the degree of M Litt from Glasgow University and currently teaches Creative Writing at Cumbria University.
Meet Kowalski in Person
The author says: ‘I don’t know where Kowalski came from. He started talking at the first line of the first story. When he’d finished, I thought that would be it, but Kowalski had more to say.
Kowalski began as a series of monologues for performance and he has been enthusiastically received wherever I have taken him.’
Some of these pieces have previously appeared elsewhere:
Kowalski’s OGM was selected for inclusion in Flax 020, Vanishing Act an online audio and film anthology, published by Lancaster Litfest’s Flax Books, in March 2010. It also features on the ThisisUll website in text form and as an audio download.
Kowalski Submits appeared in the second issue of Beautiful Scruffiness Magazine.
Kowalski’s Story, Kowalski Goes Fishing and Kowalski Afloat can be found on YouTube, in a reading by the author at Lancaster’s Spotlight club, on November 19th 2009.
Kowalski and The Fat Lady and Kowalski and the Friend of a Friend were performed at Theatre By The Lake, Keswick in April 2010.
19th March: States of Independence Festival at De Montfort University, Leicester. Independent presses from across the region (and some from around the country) will be on site, together with many regional writers whose work is published by large and small independent publishers. Join us for an hour or two or the whole day. Open to all and free of charge.
7th May: Hexam Book Festival. Details TBA.
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Also by Brindley Hallam Dennis: A Penny Spitfire, a recent Pewter Rose Press publication:
October 1947, in an industrial town, people grapple with the changes that war and history have forced upon them. Fatherless children and childless men face desire, aspiration, shame and disappointment as their war-shattered world rises from the rubble of its bombsites.
Derek Fitton is a mechanic, but people do not fit together as easily as engines, and Charles Bury, younger son of a local business man, dreams of a new, fairer, socialist world. Clive Dandridge, one step ahead of the law, entangles a troop of misfit children, including the introspective Paul and the runaway Jack, in his perverted schemes, from a hidden den deep within the rubble of the bombsite where Henry Street used to stand. On Edward Street, Tom and Violet Ferryman run The Odd Dog pub, where Burma Sammy drinks away his demob money, across the road from Fitton’s garage and the level crossing where Maria clacks in her high heels.
Visit Pewter Rose Press to read an excerpt and click here to purchase.
