For the past 4 years, we’ve been giving £500 a month to a creative in the UK. Grant #047 goes to Noor-e-Sehar Ali.

This month’s grant is the first of 4 grants funded by a reader named Nina – thank you to Nina for your generous donation!

-> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> -> Noore’s Bio -> ->

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Noor-e-Sehar Ali is a writer, DJ and archival researcher based in London. She is part of artist-in-residence collective at Buckinghamshire Culture working with nationally prestigious archives: National Disability Arts Collection Archive (NDACA) & National Paralympic Heritage Trust (NPHT), to develop creative responses to the archives to champion disability and neurodivergence in the arts alongside the Paralympic Movement.

Interested in the role of story-telling, particularly utopian narratives; her practice incorporates weaving text with sound. Ali’s writing is predicated upon a desire to transform the esoteric into accessible; informed by her on-going research in practical ethics and disability studies. Recipient of the first Magnum Photos Writers in Residence award, she began her writing career as a philosophy columnist at The Founder, co-edited The Work Experience Revolution and was writer-in-residence Colin Higginson’s exhibition In The Manner in Which it Appears in collaboration with Stroud Valleys Artspace.

Ali has led creative writing workshops at the Barbican, Copeland Gallery, SVA, and has been published by Hoax Publication, RIC Journal amongst others. Most recently she featured on the album ‘The light was sharp, our eyes were open’ by Pablo’s Eye, released on Belgian record label Stroom.tv. Alongside her debut novel LINDA, she’s working on a collection of short stories and essays narrated in dream-like soundscapes for radio as G830 and holds a monthly residency deejaying in SE LDN.

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Along with the work linked above ^^^ Ali is also presenting a proposal for her debut novel, Linda. Literary agents who enjoyed the cult classic Girl Interrupted should pick this one up before she gives the whole thing away on radio but more-so, so she can move on to her second novel about the toothpaste factory that goes missing. First three chapters ready set go upon request!

LINDA

STYLE

Literary. Linda is a story of paranoia and turbulence told with comedic calm and philosophical tenderness, the prose takes an episodic style of vignettes to evoke the nonlinearity and elusivity of memory. It includes chapters written in a secret language inspired by Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini and sketches by South London based artist Jemimah Kabuye. Book designers finna get a run for their money w this one, which is probably why non-com fic agents wys? <3

PITCH

Girl wakes up in psych ward and doesn’t know why she’s there. Falls in love and turns into an ant.

SYNOPSIS

Imaan Agha Shah, an anorexic amnesiac, wakes up in a psych ward where residents are confined within an elusive hierarchy over five floors. Clueless of her diagnosis and with no memory of what led her there, Imaan is certain of only two things: that a clone is trying to steal her identity and that her mother is dead.

As Imaan’s mental health deteriorates; ants enter her nervous system and eventually she believes she is one. This is not a Kafka situation. Kafka wakes up in the body of a fly with the mind of a human – Imaan remains in a human body but develops the mind, perspective and navigation of an ant, it is on the reader to know how and when.

Imaan is put under 1-1 care of Becky, who becomes the only staff Imaan grows a bond with. Salt and Pepper, a childless poet addicted to snorting packets of salt and pepper, begins to smother and harass Imaan but writes incredible poetry. Elahi, a Scottish anthropologist, arrives at the ward and protects Imaan, somehow knowing things about Imaan that she has never told anyone. Imaan is too unstable, and Elahi too generous, for Imaan to realize that Elahi and Becky are not who they seem.

As Imaan is transferred to the first floor, she sees a mysterious figure passing by and fears that it’s her clone. She falls in love with a vandal named Omar, (a character based on London’s most prolific graffiti artist) and their attempts to get intimate puts them under close surveillance, so he teaches Imaan a secret language for them to communicate through [1]. This secret language opens specific synapses in Imaan’s brain and she begins to regain her memories whilst ascending further into the ant situation. One chapter is written in this language, there’s an example below.

Imaan’s obsession with the font of a business card leads to her making a phone call that changes everything, not only for what is to come, but for all that has passed. Unknown to Imaan, the card is left for her to find by the strange passing figure. Could it be that who Imaan believes is a clone, is actually she who Imaan believes to be dead?

The story progresses with recollections that are sometimes vivid, and at times vague and uncertain; oscillating between frenetic activity and a calm contemplativeness. This is a story about freedom and control, personhood [2] and, depending on who’s listening, the threat of artificial intelligence.

The vibe is dream-like, off kilter and feverish. It owes much to the surrealist style of The Doll’s Alphabet by Camille Grudova, Show Them a Good Time by Nicole Flattery, and aspires to the postmodernism of Clarice Lispector. It’s giving Speedboat by Renata Adler had she written about being reduced down a legal clause. Oh yea an what about the secret language? Low res example:

FOREIGN ROOM

[1:] Depiction of the chinese room experiment.

[2:] ‘The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability’ by Elizabeth Barnes

Here’s an extra piece of Noore’s work, like a homepage easter egg !! 🍳

Story of the Utopian Crisp Planet

find out more about the grant here