Lamorna Ash | |
---|---|
Born | Lamorna Juliet Ash 27 November 1995 [1] |
Occupation | Writer |
Education | Oxford University University College London |
Notable works | Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town |
Notable awards | The Somerset Maugham Award (2021) |
Lamorna Juliet Ash (born 27 November 1995) is a British writer and education specialist. Her first book, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2021.
Ash is from West London; her mother is Cornish. [2] Ash attended St Paul's Girls' School before studying English literature at Oxford University, graduating in 2016. She earned an MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from University College London. [3] She worked as an intern at The Times Literary Supplement . [3]
After university, Ash went to Newlyn, a fishing town in Cornwall for one month to learn about their fishing community. She stayed with a local couple, Lofty and Denise, a fishmonger and a ship's chandler. [4] [5] She spent a week on the trawler Filadelfia, working with a crew of local fishermen. [6]
Her first book, Dark, Salt, Clear, written about Ash's time in Newlyn, was published by Bloomsbury in April 2020. [7] [8] In 2021, Ash won the Somerset Maugham Award for her memoir. [9] The book was a BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'. [10] [11] She is currently a freelance writer for the TLS and an English specialist for an education charity in Hackney. [3]
Cornwall is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised by Cornish and Celtic political groups as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, Devon to the east, and the English Channel to the south. The largest urban area in the county is a conurbation that includes the former mining towns of Redruth and Camborne, and the county town is the city of Truro.
Lamorna is a village, valley and cove in west Cornwall, England, UK. It is on the Penwith peninsula approximately 4 miles (6 km) south of Penzance. Lamorna became popular with the artists of the Newlyn School, including Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and Harold Knight, and is also known for former residents Derek and Jean Tangye who farmed land and wrote "The Minack Chronicles".
William Somerset Maugham was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German university. He became a medical student in London and qualified as a physician in 1897. He never practised medicine, and became a full-time writer. His first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), a study of life in the slums, attracted attention, but it was as a playwright that he first achieved national celebrity. By 1908 he had four plays running at once in the West End of London. He wrote his 32nd and last play in 1933, after which he abandoned the theatre and concentrated on novels and short stories.
Newlyn is a seaside town and fishing port in south-west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is the largest fishing port in England.
Penwith is an area of Cornwall, England, located on the peninsula of the same name. It is also the name of a former local government district, whose council was based in Penzance. The area is named after one of the ancient administrative hundreds of Cornwall which derives from two Cornish words, penn meaning 'headland' and wydh meaning 'at the end'.
Alison Louise Kennedy is a Scots writer, academic and stand-up comedian. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction, and is known for her dark tone and her blending of realism and fantasy. She contributes columns and reviews to European newspapers.
Mousehole is a village and fishing port in Cornwall, England, UK. It is approximately 2.5 miles (4 km) south of Penzance on the shore of Mount's Bay. The village is in the civil parish of Penzance. An islet called St Clement's Isle lies about 350 metres (380 yd) offshore from the harbour entrance.
Jacqueline Margaret Kay, is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1994, the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.
St Buryan is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of St Buryan, Lamorna and Paul in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. In 2011 the parish had a population of 1412.
Brenda Wootton was a Cornish folk singer and poet and was seen as an ambassador for Cornish tradition and culture in all the Celtic nations and as far as Australia and Canada.
Dame Laura Knight was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressionism. In her long career, Knight was among the most successful and popular painters in Britain. Her success in the male-dominated British art establishment paved the way for greater status and recognition for female artists.
Paul Farley FRSL is a British poet, writer and broadcaster.
Bucca is a male sea-spirit in Cornish folklore, a merman, that inhabited mines and coastal communities as a hobgoblin during storms. The mythological creature is a type of water spirit likely related to the Púca from Irish, the Pwca from Welsh folklore, and the female mari-morgans, a type of mermaid from Welsh and Breton mythology. Rev W. S. Lach-Szyrma, one 19th-century writer on Cornish antiquities, suggested the Bucca had originally been an ancient pagan deity of the sea such as Irish Nechtan or British Nodens, though his claims are mainly conjecture. Folklore however records votive food offerings made on the beach similar to those made to the subterranean Knockers and may represent some form of continuity with early or pre-Christian Brittonic belief practices.
Lesley Glaister is a British novelist, poet and playwright. She has written 15 novels, Blasted Things (2020) being the most recent, one play and numerous short stories and radio plays. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of St Andrews, and is a regular contributor of book reviews to The Spectator and The Times. She is married to poet Andrew Greig.
Mystery was a Mount's Bay lugger which made a voyage to Australia in 1854/55. Her passage to Cape Town was so fast that she was commissioned to take mail from there to Australia.
Jane Rogers is a British novelist, editor, scriptwriter, lecturer, and teacher. She is best known for her novels Mr. Wroe's Virgins and The Voyage Home. In 1994 Rogers was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Fishing in Cornwall, England, UK, has traditionally been one of the main elements of the economy of the county. Pilchard fishing and processing was a thriving industry in Cornwall from around 1750 to around 1880, after which it went into an almost terminal decline. During the 20th century the varieties of fish taken became much more diverse and crustaceans such as crab and lobster are now significant. Much of the catch is exported to France due to the higher prices obtainable there. Though fishing has been significantly damaged by overfishing, the Southwest Handline Fishermen's Association has started to revive the fishing industry. As of 2007, stocks were improving. The Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee is one of 12 committees responsible for managing the corresponding Sea Fisheries District. The Isles of Scilly Sea Fisheries Committee is responsible for the Scilly district.
Harold Harvey (1874–1941) was a Newlyn School painter who painted scenes of working-class Cornish fishermen, farmers and miners and Cornish landscapes. He was born in Penzance and trained at the Penzance School of Arts under Norman Garstin and the Académie Julian in Paris (1894–1896).
Annie Walke or Anne Fearon Walke was an English artist. Anne Fearon grew up and was schooled in Banstead, Surrey. After completing her studies at the Chelsea School of Art and the London School of Art, she and her sister, Hilda Fearon, furthered their studies in Dresden, Germany. About the turn of the 20th century Miss Fearon settled in Cornwall, where she continued her studies and established a studio in the Cornish coastal village of Polruan.
Marjorie Frances Bruford known as Midge Bruford was a British artist associated with the Newlyn School of artists. Although born in Eastbourne, Bruford was an active participant in several of the artist groups based in Cornwall throughout her adult life.