On My Radar: Monique Roffey’s Culture Highlights | Monique roffey

METEROnique Roffey is an award-winning writer born in Trinidad in 1965 whose novels include The white woman on a green bicycle Y House of ashes, finalists, respectively, for the Orange and Costa awards. She is also a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Writing School. His sixth novel, The mermaid with the black conch, won Costa Book of the Year and is shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio 2021 award, announced on March 24.

1. Art

Epic Iran at the V&A

This may well be the first thing you will see on June 21. They have something like 350 objects that date back more than 5,000 years. I am completely magnetized by Iran and yet it is so mysterious and so closed to us. I am obsessed with looking at artifacts. I saw the Buddhist exhibit not long ago at the V&A and loved it. I like to look at old things. At the Museum of London, they have tons of things they found in the Thames, from hairy mammoth skulls to Viking helmets and spoons.

2. Fiction

Vital signs of Tessa McWatt

This is a marriage in crisis. The wife has a brain aneurysm, the husband is seriously flawed, so it comes down to guilt and how things change between them over time. McWatt is Canadian-Guyanese. Your book I’m ashamed it is a memoir about their very mixed Creole identity. She is someone who is under the radar, but I would say that she is one of our best black writers. She is a deeply thoughtful woman and deeply radical in her thinking. She is not on the fence about her politics.

3. Movie

Nomadlanddir Chloé Zhao)

The cinematography, the script, everything about this movie attracts me. It’s about an older woman on the road, America, outsiders, and different communities. I relate to the story of an older woman on a trip. A nomadic existence is something that fascinates me. I always feel like I already know everything about the US from Hollywood, but since it’s about a Chinese director making a road movie in the US, I thought, “Oh wow, this is going to be something really different. “. It stars Frances McDormand and she just won a Golden Globe.

4. nofiction

The Gift of Music and Singing: Interviews With Jamaican Writers by Jacqueline Bishop

There is a kind of erasure of Caribbean women writers, so this is a fundamental piece of forensic literary activism. The bishop interviews Jean D’Costa, Hazel Campbell, Velma Pollard, Christine Craig, Marcia Douglas, and Ann-Margaret Lim. People from outside the region don’t even know that we have this amount of local talent. Bishop has been doing these interviews for years, initially published in the Jamaica Observer. She is a tough interviewer. She is like King Larry of the Caribbean. Don’t let these women be forgotten. I hope she does one in each [Caribbean] Island. I hope Trinidad does.

5. Music

Diamond Life de Sade

I’m a kid from the 80s and 90s, and diamond life It’s the sound of my youth It was released in 1984 so I would have been 19 or 20. Smooth operator, Your love is king, Wait for your love, they are all great. She has this goddess stature, stage presence, dedication and voice. You can put it on when you are frying onions and having a bottle of wine. I read in Rolling Stone recently that she is making another album. I am 55 now and she must be my age or older and has not changed! She remains beautiful on all levels: voice and image.

6. TV

Line of Duty (BBC One)

I am a staunch fan. Police shows are my guilty pleasure. Jed Mercurio’s writing is so good. What makes it so fascinating is this whole idea of ​​a department spying on dubbed cops who don’t exist. [in real life], but it feels really believable. Jed used to be a novelist. I was in a guardian rookie novelists 20 years ago with him, so I’ve had my eye on him. I’m interested in him as a partner, but also as someone who is doing great television. And Adrian Dunbar, I love watching it.