FICTION

Courttia Newland with Palash Davé

Courttia Newland is a novelist, anthologist, screenwriter, playwright, educator and activist. Having unsettled the conventions of crime fiction, he turns his questing mind to speculative fiction in his latest work, A River in Time.

This epic novel envisages an alternative London, devastated by war and climate change, and divided into a wealthy Inner City and poverty-stricken Outer City. He calls it “the greatest expansion of my literary imagination thus far. It's a bit mad, a whole lot London, but also a tale for the wider diaspora”.

In this Juneteenth special interview with Palash Davé, Courttia also discusses Black Lives Matter, the statues we need to erect, current events in Britain and the US, and the gauntlet he and fellow BAME writers have thrown down to the publishing industry.