INTERVIEWS
Everyone deserves a place in fiction
T he award winning Children’s and Young Adult novelist Alex Wheatle MBE visited Dulwich College to discuss his novels with classes from Years 7-9; the writing process with members of the Joint Creative Writing Workshop; and the state of BAME fiction with the Afro-Caribbean Culture Society. Here English teacher Dr Malcolm Cocks describes his visit, then Alex responds to some probing questions from Josiah Roberts (Year 12) and Dr Cocks. Alex is best known for his debut novel Brixton Rock (1999) and for his Crongton series — a fictional estate where a cast of memorable characters live and negotiate tricky emotional and social situations. Although Brixton Rock is the most obviously autobiographical of his fiction, his stories all draw on the author’s experience — including his early years in Brixton, his time in care, and his period in prison following his participation in the Brixton Riots in 1981. The visit began with Alex treating pupils from the Lower and Middle Schools to some readings from his Crongton series, interspersed with accounts of his life that had inspired some of the characters and events in his novels; and — in one session — to a remarkably well-improvised rendition of one of Alex’s early reggae compositions — Uprising! Alex is a remarkably good storyteller and had his audience as much invested in the story of his life as they were in the extracts from his fiction that he shared with them. Alex’s final meeting of the day was with 12 members of the Joint Creative Writing Workshop in the Upper School. They discussed the crafting of characters and how to engage readers by appealing to their sense of empathy. Finally Alex met with the Afro-Caribbean Culture Society, where Josiah Roberts did a first-rate job of interviewing him in front of a small panel audience.
It was crucial for me that the people I grew up with were given a voice
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