COVER FEATURE
ART & LIT
LISETTE AUTON
LIZZIE LOVEJOY TALKS TO NORTHERN WRITER, ACTIVIST AND CREATIVE LISETTE AUTON ABOUT HER INSPIRATIONAL DEBUT NOVEL IMAGE BY ROB IRISH “I wanted to write about disabled people having adventures. Not being second best, not being a villain…I want it to be kind and fun.” The Secret of Haven Point is the exciting debut novel by Darlingtonbased writer and creative practitioner Lisette Auton. She continues: “[I wanted it] to have the grittiness of the places that we love and know up North. And I wanted to write about a captain with a kitten in his beard! Then the book just happened.” With clear focus on both Northern and disabled identity, Lisette has written a powerful book about a daring and adventurous community of ‘wrecklings’. I wanted to know more about her
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decision to make everything so clearly local, especially in her use of dialect and colloquialisms. “I realised that we speak in patterns, we have a lyricalness to our language. I wondered if I could put in the pattern from our language and the odd words. Then maybe we’ll know it’s from us. “I did get told, right from the beginning, that it might be harder to sell to other countries and places. So there was a point, I suppose, where I could have gone ‘no, I’ll make it more universal’ but I can’t. It’s my voice. It’s how I write. It’s what I love. That was a definite choice I made. Because our voice isn’t in stories, is it? Our voice
