Nigel Jarrett

Much of Nigel Jarrett's early writing was lying moribund and unpublished in a drawer when a weird-looking magazine arrived at the evening newspaper where he worked as a journalist.

It was  home-made with eccentric typography, the odd word or phrase was Tippex-ed out, and text would often refuse to turn the page but make an ascent in the margins of the existing one.

The magazine, only apparently experimental, was called Cambrensis; its editor, Arthur Smith, was a retired employee of the South Wales Electricity Board. Smith was devoted to the short story, and so was his magazine. Jarrett sent him some stories, which he published, and was thus introduced to the world of small literary magazines (SLMs). They have published reams of his work, at home and abroad.

Jarrett was deputy chief sub-editor of the South Wales Argus when he won the Rhys Davies Prize, named to commemorate the celebrated novelist and story writer; and later the Templar Prize, both for short fiction.

He has written affectionately about SLMs, which seemed to come and go like seeds on the wind, sometimes germinating, but more often settling in soil that promised much but delivered little - and not for long. The joke was always that a magazine that had accepted his work might not exist long enough to publish it; and for a while, he wondered if the connection between being published in a magazine just before it ceased to exist was cause or correlation. For sure, SLMs didn't pay him much, if anything.   

As a freelance, Jarrett has written on a wide variety of topics, including classical music (he had also been chief music critic at the Argus) and jazz (he's been a reviewer and columnist for Jazz Journal magazine since 2010). So far, he's written nine books: four collections of stories, two of poetry, one novel, a fictional memoir, and a selection of essays called Never Lost for Words. With his school pal Godfrey Brangham, he co-edited a collection of Arthur Machen's non-fictional prose.

The best way to see a little of what Jarrett has been up to as a writer is to 'Google' his name, or 'Google' it with any of the following: The Lonely Crowd; Nation.Cymru; Jazz Journal; Arts Scene in Wales. What he obviously hasn't been up to is refusing to deny that only a 14-year-old can tell you how to look up something on the internet.

Jarrett's début Brimstone title is a story collection called Ways of the Flesh. Its tales are not all about sexual proclivity: sometimes, the flesh has ideas of its own, over which the protagonist has little control.

Nigel Jarrett lives in Abergavenny, on the eastern edge of Bryncheinion Bannau, the Brecon Beacons. He swims, but not often enough.

 

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Other titles by Nigel Jarrell include: