Drummers for Sudan, the film

Click here to see a wonderful viral campaign film organised by Jamie Catto of Faithless and featuring the lovely Richard Jupp of Elbow, Radiohead’s Phil Selway, Stewart Copeland (Police), and Jonny Quinn (Snow Patrol), leading the drum call for peace in Sudan. They are joined in the film by drummers from all over the world, and today by live drummers in 15 countries including London (starting this minute outside Downing Street if anyone can make it…)

Sign up to the campaign for peace at:
http://www.sudan365.org/

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sudan campaign event, Saturday 9 January

This week sees a critical moment for Sudan, with aid agencies, diplomats, grassroots activists and ordinary civilians all warning of the possibility of a return to war. To sound the alarm, a whole series of events are happening this week…. There’s an inter-agency report from a whole host of NGOs and campaign groups including Christian Aid, Oxfam International, Save the Children Sudan and TearFund, a Chatham House report, a debate in the House of Lords, a visit from Sudanese Archbishop Daniel Deng to see the Archbishop of Canterbury and Gordon Brown, and Glenys Kinnock, Minister for Africa is off to north and south Sudan on a fact-finding mission…

There’s also the chance for anyone who can reach London in the snow to act - on Saturday, there will be a big demonstration calling for peace outside 10 Downing Street. The event kicks off at 11am, with speeches from 1-2pm and a warmer event afterwards at St John’s Church in Waterloo with hot tea and coffee. There are a few extra elements to the events that I’ll update this website with on Saturday… The idea is beat a drum for peace, so bring something to hit… It’ll kick off a whole year’s campaigning for Sudan as part of a global coalition called Sudan365…

join the Facebook Group here….

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

LSE literary festival, February 2010

I’m speaking at the LSE Literary Festival on Saturday 13th February, alongside war reporting legends Janine di Giovanni and Sam Kiley - in a discussion called ‘War Stories: How to bring the battle to the book’.
The event’s from 10.30am-12pm at the Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building. You need tickets - which are free and available from the website.
The discussion is aiming to look at war journalism in its historical context, as well as whether it is ever really possible to report objectively and openly on war….

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Guardian review, (last Saturday)

The nervously-awaited Guardian’s review for Something is Going to Fall Like Rain, is here

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hopers not haters

Meanwhile, anyone coming across from my Hope not Hate blog – the campaign to stop the BNP – I will also try to keep you updated. The campaign grows ever stronger in the wake of the BNP’s victories in the North West and Yorkshire, galvanising a growing movement.

Sign up at www.hopenothate.org.uk to the Not In My Name campaign, and stay in touch. There may be British Nazis in the European Parliament but the fight is just beginning.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

18th June is the day

So, tomorrow, Thursday 18th June, is the day. 11 years after I made a promise to a 15-year-old boy in South Sudan that I wouldn’t forget his village, my first novel – Something is Going to Fall Like Rain is finally coming out.

It’s been a long slog. A few years, and I have a million people to thank for supporting me along the way.

It’s the story of three aidworkers who get trapped in a village in South Sudan for six months or so during the 1998 famine – and also the story of a Dinka village’s fight to carry on existing despite war, starvation, aerial bombardment and disease.

You would think that it might be a depressing place, but Sudan is an incredible place, full of light and life, laughter and dancing, as well as grief, fear and tears. I was very lucky to spend time there on and off between 1998 and 2001, and to have worked many times elsewhere in Africa.

There is a fragile peace in South Sudan now. It is Darfur in the north of the country, a couple of hundred miles from the villages I visited in 1998 that has come to be synonymous with genocide.

But while that fragile peace holds by a thread the atrocities go on, and as two million people try to return to the country to resettle, they face a fight for all the basics of human existence, for water, food, land, education and healthcare.

For that reason a percentage of every book sold is going to go to Oxfam. And buying the book from the Reportage Press website – www.reportagepress.com will donate again, as for every 100 books sold a borehole will be dug in the drylands of the South.

For more on Oxfam’s work in South Sudan see
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/countries/sudan_south.htmam.co.uk/

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment