Wordsmithery*
Finalist (Publishing) Kent Creative Awards 2016
Winner (Literature) Medway Culture, design and tourism awards 2015
SAM HALL
Three Instances Of Not Meeting Jarvis Cocker (graphic novel, 2024)
My Mind Is Free (graphic novel, 2023) Cat Dreams (illustrated zine, 2021)
Sam Hall (she/her) is a writer and illustrator.
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She writer of mostly spec fiction, CNF and plays, who recently fell in love with graphic novels. She has been published in places including; Epoch, Dark London, The Medusa Project, Litro, Emerging Worlds, The Journal, The Morecambe Festival Anthology 2, and Le Menteur. Her plays have been performed in the UK, Italy and the USA.
Her adaptation of her play about human trafficking into a graphic novel, My Mind Is Free, was longlisted in the LDC Graphic Novel Award 2021.
GRAPHIC NOVEL: MY MIND IS FREE
After an infuriating interview with a bigoted and ill-informed celebrity commentator, journalist Zadie and her producer set out to tell the real human stories of human trafficking. Also listening to the radio show is the driver of an anonymous white van. The van crashes and four people who were hiding in the back are free – they make their way deep into a forest, not knowing what to do next…
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Printed in full colour on 120gsm recycled paper, with 250gsm recycled cover, My Mind Is Free tells the stories of three people who have been trafficked to the UK and one British man who is trafficked within it.
My Mind Is Free is a story that crosses borders and aims to give a human face to the often inflammatory rhetoric around the issues of modern day slavery and human trafficking.
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Reviews:
“My Mind Is Free is a powerful graphic novel, beautifully realised. It weaves together four stories of modern slavery in the UK. The full colour illustrations and the playful form bring the individual characters to the forefront of the narrative. This warmth and humanity only serves to make the exposure of the exploitation and abuse all the more disturbing.”
Sarah Hehir, writer, Doctors and The Archers
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“My Mind is Free, is a harrowing collection of stories told with care, compassion and transparent honesty. Hall juxtaposes each tale with the firebrand energy of the main protagonist's verve to find out the truth. Combined with the art style that creates extra grit and a softness, we are welcomed into a world where four people from four very different places share similar experiences and stories, yet, a strikingly similar fate."
Genevieve Ray, poet and producer
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*Due to topics covered in this book, parental discretion is advised.
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£15.00 plus £2 p+p (UK)
GRAPHIC NOVEL: THREE INSTANCES OF NOT MEETING JARVIS COCKER
Three Instances Of Not Meeting Jarvis Cocker is not really about not meeting Jarvis Cocker, it’s a story about loss and the loss of love of all kinds.
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Some of it is based on things that happened adjacent to the author's life. She did work in journalism in the 1990s. She did almost meet Jarvis Cocker on a number of occasions. She did have a flatmate who died, but the character of Hannah is entirely fictitious. She stands for all the people in the author's life that are no longer in her life.
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It's about not only the loss through death, but also the loss of friends as you get older.
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Printed in full colour on 120gsm recycled paper, with 250gsm recycled cover, Three Instances Of Not Meeting Jarvis Cocker, is a fictionalised memoir.
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Review:
"‘Three Instances of Not Meeting Jarvis Cocker’ is sophisticated: the sparse words and striking graphics lead you through the story of love and loss that we’re promised on the back cover. We’re invited right into the narrator’s memory of the 1990’s and early 2000’s where nostalgia meets grief... It manages to be both huge and understated. Some of the most difficult questions are literally boxed off, like ‘Why didn’t she tell her family?’ while the big philosophical, existential, heart-breaking revelations are contained in short floating thoughts against a black background."
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£10 plus £2 p+p (UK)
ILLUSTRATED ZINE: CAT DREAMS
A fanciful musing on memory and how Sam is, and always has been, a cat person.
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Printed in full colour on 120gsm recycled paper, with 300gsm recycled cover, and 23 pages of illustrations, of cats, family and friends, Cat Dreams also explores memory, and how as we get older, how we realise that the past seems (and was) a far more precious and exciting place than it did at the time.
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Reviews:
"Really delightful - you don't have to be a cat person to enjoy it."
"I loved the illustrations, and the story. Reminded me of my youth - and how I wasn't allowed a dog!"
*A percentage of profits will go to the Cinnamon Trust, (The National Charity for older people, the terminally ill and their pets), once production costs have been covered.
£6 plus £1.50 p+p (UK)
