 |
| Rebecca Perry Photo by Ross Jones |
| The |
Books
0f my
life
Rebecca Perry: ‘Lorca hit me like a bolt of lightning’
My earliest reading memory
Reading On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan, aged five or so, sitting on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my brother – who, in my memory, was sitting on the carpet next to me.
My favourite book growing up
I had a collection of fairytales in a big yellow hardback, which I was totally entranced by from around the age of seven to 10. I’ll never forget the feeling of despair on turning the page and discovering that the Little Mermaid had become foam on the surface of the water; it was a very early lesson in the helplessness of the reader in the face of a story’s destiny. In particular, though, I loved a Scottish fairytale called The Black Bull of Norroway, which I think, in many ways, has been under the surface of everything I’ve ever written.The book that changed me as a teenager
Collected Plays by Federico García Lorca, which I studied for GCSE drama and led me to seek out his poetry. It would be impossible for me to think about my adolescent relationship to reading, and my relationship as an adult to language, without Lorca. I remember these lines from City That Does Not Sleep hitting me like a bolt of lightning: “… and the man who rushes out with his / spirit broken will meet on the street corner / the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath / the tender protest of the stars”.
The book that made me want to be a writer
I really don’t think this is something that happened to me. I have just written for as long as I can remember and, at a certain point as an adult, I realised that normal living people can write books if they want to, if they’re lucky, and that maybe I would like to try to do that. To answer a slightly different question, Percival Everett’s astonishing The Trees was the book that made me feel I might be able to write a novel.
The book I reread
Anne Carson’s Glass and God, in particular The Glass Essay. It’s basically perfect – my go-to text for resetting my brain and being reminded, within the space of a page, about the capacities of writing.
My comfort read
The poetry collection Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo, who died in 2023. I keep this book on the shelf directly above my desk and when the loss of him feels particularly impossible, I take it down, read a poem and remember he’s there on the page.
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry is published by Granta. It won the 2026 Waterstones debut fiction prize and is longlisted for the Booker prize.
Rebecca Perry was born in 1986 in London. She graduated from Manchester’s Centre for New Writing in 2008 and lives in London. She has published several pamphlets, including little armoured (Seren, 2012), which won the Poetry Wales Purple Moose Prize and was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice; cleanliness of rooms and walls (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2017); insect & lilac (2019), co-authored with Amy Key from a joint residency at Halsway Manor (the National Centre for Folk Arts); and beaches (Offord Road Press, 2019). Her first book-length collection, Beauty/Beauty (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017, and was also shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection. Her second book-length collection, Stone Fruit, also a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was published by Bloodaxe in 2021. Her novel, May We Feed the King (Granta Books, 2026), winner of the 2026 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, is longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment