Body talk, with Dr Charley Barnes

How our 2023 bestseller came to be published, and why it could be a life-changing read

Our biggest “hit” of 2023 looks set to be From the Body, an anthology of personal essays and creative non-fiction, published back in June. Seeking contributions from authors who had “something to say to, or from, their bodies”, it was the brainchild of Dr Charley Barnes, who I will be briefly interviewing later in today’s post.

Besides Charley’s inspired editorial choices, the book’s success was ultimately due to support from bookshops (particularly the independents), so let me take this opportunity to thank all the booksellers reading this. I don’t need to say “all the booksellers reading this who stocked From the Body” because it seems like you all did – I sent Charley a list of all the individual shops who housed the anthology on publication day, and the email was “clipped” by Gmail for exceeding its message length. So, yes: thank you, and to our sales agency for spreading the word so effectively.

This blog has started with an unusual level of swagger for a By the Book post (I won’t make a habit of it, I assure you!), so let me immediately qualify the success by pointing out that my personal contribution to the production of this book was almost zero (though I did give it the “green light”, back in July 2021). The cover, as with Matt Riker and Jeffrey Loffman’s, is a Peter Barnfather masterclass in taking a centuries-old painting (Still Life with Flowers and a Watch, Abraham Mignon, c. 1660-1679) and adapting it for a 2020s audience. (I think he would call the main technique a “colour wash”.) There’s no doubt Peter’s cover also had a significant part to play in this book’s success; many people have picked it out as a favourite of recent years.

In fact, the true lesson here might be that when every aspect of production comes together perfectly, and some basic infrastructure is in place, a small press really can do absolute justice to a book and deliver it to the readers it deserves. Almost life-affirming, isn’t it! So is the book, in its way, though it is the furthest from an “easy read” of anything Valley Press has published in 2023. (That’s another lesson, I suppose: readers aren’t afraid to be challenged.) At Charley’s behest, the contributors engaged in frank, intimate dialogue with their own bodies, then agreed to put a copy of said dialogue in every bookshop in the land; that is an act of phenomenal bravery, and they very much deserve a round of “thank yous” too.

Here are a few extracts of the essays in From the Body, after which you’ll find my interview with the book’s editor.

“I often took nourishment for granted. I placed food into my mouth and chewed, a mundane task to keep myself fuelled for daily routines. ‘Calories’ was merely a word I saw printed on magazines and inside the slimming world leaflets that were posted through my mother’s letterbox. I had no use for it in my vocabulary. My relationship with food was healthy, until the moment my body became a stranger.” Faye Alexandra Rose

“Early on in our time together, when my therapist asks me where in the body I feel my anxiety, my answer surprises me. I always imagined that I would say my shoulders; feeling the day’s worry in their rigidity, in their tensing. Instead, I say, ‘my Belly.’ I say I feel the anxiety swilling around in there like when I try to move after drinking too much tea.” Andrew McMillan

“Gingerly, we lowered ourselves in. A tingling, more abrasive than cold, crept across our skin. Entering always takes longer in winter. It means submerging each inch of flesh slowly but steadily, to stop the body going into shock. ‘Why do we do this again?’ I asked my friend, as my already-numb hands sought to break a path through the ice. They grinned at me. ‘Because all our other hobbies have been cancelled.’” Daisy Black

Hi Charley, thank you for making time to speak to readers of our blog. You have a very busy literary life – I haven't kept a close track, but before I left Twitter I noticed you had perhaps eight or nine projects on the go this year related to books. Is that correct, how did you come to be in such a position, and what's it like?

It has been a year with many projects on the go at once, yes, especially between editing, writing, and academic work. In truth, the only way I can think to answer what that's like is to say it's mostly organised chaos – but in a truly brilliant way. I think when you split yourself across multiple roles – academic/author or author/editor – it's inevitable that those roles will knock together on occasions, when it comes to juggling projects. However, given that I've been on a year's leave from teaching throughout 2023, some of these projects happened when they happened simply because I wanted, or rather needed, to make the most out of the time I had for them, now, before that opportunity passed.

What were some of your early experiences with books and/or writing?

I have very clear and cherished memories of writing poetry as a child. Of course, it wasn't poetry, and on reflection it was truly terrible writing. Still, those early experiences eventually catapulted me into books and reading, helped along by a much-loved Nancy Drew book that my mother gifted me when I was younger, too. To this day, I cite that as the starting moment for the life of writing, and now writing about, crime fiction. 

How did you first come up with the idea for From the Body?

In the vaguest of terms, I had my own “problems” with food and my body. It became part of my healing, and part of my desire to heal, that I wanted to hear other narratives around those two topics. I think this was probably the seedling for the anthology. That said, From the Body became something much bigger and much richer than I could have imagined, expanding beyond these original parameters to evidence the complex and varying relationships we have with our bodies. What started as a passion project for personal healing became a much more eye-opening experience than I could have imagined it would be. 

What was the editorial process like? Any particularly strong memories from that time?

I have an especially strong memory of trying to gather the anthology into an order. It was my first time compiling anything of this nature and if I'm honest, I really didn't know where to start. Where I ended up involved me taking over a conference table in a building at work, setting all of the essays side by side, colour-coding the lot of them in terms of general themes and thinking, Right, what goes where now? It was a huge learning curve for me, but also a really beautiful experience to see the works slot together how they did. 

What kind of feedback have you had on the anthology?

Nothing but positive, which is a relief for any editor, I'm sure! The response has been overwhelmingly positive and truly heart-warming, too, to see the ways in which people have engaged with both individual pieces and the book as a whole. What's been especially enjoyable is hearing from people who, for want of a better expression, “feel seen” by an essay. It's encouraging and comforting to me as an editor to know there's a collected work out there that can enable empathy, compassion, and a reading experience that clearly lasts, too. 

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At the end of previous interviews, I had asked authors to choose one page of their book to share with readers – but this has proved a very unpopular request, and Dr Barnes said it would impossible in this case. So the new “finale” is asking interviewees if there’s a question they’d like to ask me. Charley asked: “What was it about From the Body that appealed to you as a publisher?”

There were numerous factors that led me to say yes, and here are a few that I recall: a great concept that seemed certain to provoke great writing; a desire to collaborate with Charley in particular, after seeing her work ethic in action elsewhere; an excellent, passion-filled initial pitch and meeting; a sense that VP really was the best home for this book; and finally (somewhat more cynically) the fact essay collections were having a moment and we didn’t have one scheduled. Any one of these factors would have been enough to merit serious consideration of the project, but together they made it a must-publish.

Also, long-time readers may recall the six criteria I look for when commissioning any book; the perfect Valley Press title is earnest, unique, exceptional, thoughtful, catchy and important. Charley’s interest in the topic was obviously completely sincere (earnest), I could find no other essay collection on this topic (unique), the suggested contributors were all great talents who would take the challenge seriously (exceptional, thoughtful), the title and concept of “something to say to, or from, their bodies” really stuck with me (catchy), and as Charley hinted at in her last answer, for the right reader, this could be a truly life-changing read (important).

If you think you might be that reader, the book is available from the VP bookshop in paperback, and also on Kindle as an ebook. At this time of year, publishers will be telling you non-stop about “great gifts”, but From the Body is really best suited as a gift to yourself; after all, there’s no one more deserving of your empathy and compassion.

Thank you for reading, and thanks again to Charley for answering my questions. See you all soon.