Guest author: Courttia Newland
Speculative fiction takes the question ‘what if?’ to unleash a myriad of opportunities for the writer: breaking down form, rewriting historical tradition, playing with genre expectations, and revisioning norms of gender and race and other categories. In tonight’s zalon, Courttia Newland, the award-winning novelist, screenwriter and playwright, joins Kellie to discuss the creative possibilities and challenges of writing speculative fiction in the context of his other creative work. His latest novel, A River Called Time (January 2021), is set in an alternate London where slavery and colonisation never happened, and Cosmogramma, a collection of speculative fiction stories, will be published by Canongate later this year. As a screenwriter Courttia has written two feature length films for the Steve McQueen BBC series Small Axe, of which Lovers Rock was jury selected for Cannes and opened New York Film Fest 2020.