wanted to play. I did the same thing, and I wrote, performed and toured two solo shows.”
At the time, Manjeet wasn’t thinking about writing a novel but says she kept seeing adverts for Penguin’s WriteNow competition, to surface new talent from under-represented areas of society. She sent off the first 10,000 words of Run Rebel, but says: “I thought it was something I could go for, without really thinking anything would come of it. When I was chosen, I thought ‘what have I done?’, but I haven’t looked back and thank god I did it. Penguin have been so supportive.” The decision to tell Amber’s story through verse stemmed from Manjeet’s first two solo shows, which were performance poetry. She says: “Moving to long form with the book, verse seemed like a good bridge from writing those solo performance pieces. Verse was something I knew, it was in my skin at the time because I had been touring both of those piece for the best part of three years. Verse was a comfortable place for me, and something I understood.” The chosen authors were given a year of mentoring into how to get published and worked with editors from Penguin’s Ladybird and Puffin imprints to develop ideas. Manjeet continued to work on Run Rebel, and was able to draw on other people’s experiences as she shaped story and character. Part of that came from workshops she was holding through her not for profit organisation Run the World (
www.runtheworld.org.uk), with its mission to “empower women and girls through sport and theatre”. The workshops were a natural fit for the issues in Run Rebel, and Manjeet says: “We had a workshop with a group of women survivors of
Manjeet Mann.
domestic violence, which was already a big theme in the book. Working with those women helped to solidify a lot of the themes. Although Run Rebel is based a little bit on my childhood, these things are still happening and these stories still need to be told. That group helped to build the world of Run Rebel.” Manjeet’s latest novel, The Crossing, is another that draws on those real life encounters, and again it is told in verse. This time it centres around the relationship between teenagers Natalie and Sammy as their paths cross in Dover. Natalie is local and has just lost her mother, while her brother Ryan joins far right marches through the streets. Sammy has just arrived, after fleeing Eritrea for a new life in Europe. “I wanted to build understanding. I moved to a town near Dover in 2015 and it was all anyone could talk about – ‘The boats coming, the refugees in our town’. There was a lot of misinformation and racism, and it was really quite horrible. This idea percolated around my head for a good five years before I put pen to paper. “When I started to speak to young people with refugee-status and young people like Natalie and Ryan that was when I got the idea of where it would go. I did a theatre project that was about Brexit, but actually, a lot of things about refugees kept coming up. There were a
6 PEN&INC.
lot of young people who had similar ideas to Ryan, Natalie’s brother who joins a far- right group. That was uncomfortable, but I wanted to say something about it. “I want it to hit home when I write. I want people to have a real reaction, that is why I write. I want to make it feel real and do my research to tell that story. If what I’m writing feels uncomfortable for me, I always feel like I am on the right track – that is where I like to get to. If I am feeling something, then hopefully my readers will too. I want people to feel
Spring-Summer 2021
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