Mark Gertler at Foyles

Last Friday I read "Mark Gertler in 13 Sketches" at Tales of the Decongested at Foyles. It's always a great delight to read at Decongested as there's a great audience, people who are interested in the short form, and the organisers - Rebekah and Paul - are always fantastic to work with. It was strange having Gertler's biographer, Sarah MacDougall, in the audience - I kept worrying that she'd feel I was stealing her Gertler from her and also wondering if the Gertler I'm wrirting about is the same one as she has, if she could see her Gertler while listening to me reading. Sarah was there with Rachel Silman - both of them experts on the Whitechapel Boys, and curators of exhibitions at the Ben Uri Gallery. Rachel was saying that they're having a big Rosenberg exhibition next year to commemorate 90 years since the day he died, and also 90 years since the end of the First World War. That's a real incentive to get me to finish the Rosenberg section of the Whitechapoel triptych. My daily hour-an-a-half of writing was going really well until about ten days ago - it's time to get back to Rosenberg; I can feel him waiting.

Running on the Spot

I've got a new story up on the fiction site, Pulp.Net. It's a story about running, something that I haven't done for more than a month, which, when you're a runner, can feel like forever and that you'll never run again, in your life. Ever. But back to Pulp.Net - it's one of those short story sites that are always great to visit: great design, great listings, great stories - and there's also a regular column where writers write about their top 10 books: Bernadine Evaristo, David Mitchell, Hisham Matar - and me! - are all there, among others. The person behind it all is Lane Ashfeldt and she's committed to promoting short-story writers, and she's a fantastic writer herself. She's also the editor of Down the Angel, a book of short stories set in Islington. But what I was going to say about the running story is that there's a bit where I talk about my disappointment at not having photos of me running - that's all in the past, though - because there's a brief clip of me in tights doing the Nike 10K Run in Hyde Park. Check it out.