Dark Angels Note 147
Dearest Friends
Welcome back to our weekly Friday Note.
Observing
This week marks the birthday of British writer Jon Ronson.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and BBC Radio 4, Ronson is a non-fiction author, journalist, and filmmaker.
Following its release, his book The Psychopath Test was on the UK bestseller list for the duration of 2012. Another of his bestsellers, The Men Who Stare at Goats, became a motion picture in 2009.
Ronson started his career writing for a college magazine, then Smash Hits. In an Interview with Fantastic Man Magazine, he talks about writing his first script for a radio drama when he was 20 which he sent to BBC (they replied with, “…it’s so bad, what you sent, it’s so beyond repair, that you really have to give it up.”)
Reading
“I don’t have a list of questions.”
Read more about why Ronson employs such a surprisingly bold interview technique in Seven things we learned from Jon Ronson’s Desert Island Discs.
Writing
If you could interview any person from history or the present day, what would you want to know? What questions would you ask that would give you a greater understanding of them?
Write a list of interview questions for them!
Sharing
Jamie Jauncey’s biography of his extraordinary great-great-uncle is available throughout May at a 20% pre-publication discount (full price £24.99). Just quote DONROBERTO20 at checkout.
Who was he? Don Roberto (RB Cunninghame Graham) was a founding force in both the Labour Party and the SNP. As a writer of stories and sketches he was compared to Maupassant. A horseman, traveller and adventurer he was also a great humanitarian whose values ring more loudly today than ever. Jamie explores the role of mythic figures in family history.
“A combination of all that is best in memoir, history and biography.” Caroline Moorehead
Keep sending us your poems, writings, links and writerly whatnots that you’d like to share with the wider Dark Angels family.
__
Diary
Hearts, Inspired, 16-21 June 2023
Join us for a 5-day writing retreat on Whidbey Island, in the US Pacific Northwest. We’ll explore writing, creativity and inspiration through guided writing, personal projects and time in nature.
Find out more here.
Words Are Seeds, 19-23 June 2023
Five days of writing, rituals and nature connection at Bore Place over the summer solstice. We’re expecting a lively, stimulating and playful experience, with plenty of time for individual pondering, wondering and wandering – and writing.
Find out more here.
Weekly Tuesday Gatherings
Join us for a reflective hour of reading, writing and communing led by Neil Baker. Everyone is welcome; in fact, invite a friend along. We meet at 7pm UK time. To join us, click here on the night. There’s no need to register in advance and we’ll be using the same link every week from now on.
Starter Day, 17 May 2023
This one-day course in central London will introduce you to some of the core ideas and practices that underpin the Dark Angels approach to writing – whether that’s writing for work or for your own creative expression.
Find out more here.
Be well, keep reading, keep writing and know that we’re always here.
From everyone at Dark Angels