Author Interview: Ashley Barker
Q&A with the contributors from our latest issue.
Ashley Barker was born in East London. His writing has appeared in Brand, Portland Review, Rattle, and on the London Fringe and Off-West End. His piece, ‘Somebody’ appears in Hinterland Issue 15.
What’s the last thing (except for this!) that you wrote?
The last thing I wrote was a radio play/closet drama called Ariadne on KNXOS. The very last thing I wrote was for a solicitor: answers to questions concerning my late-mother's estate.
What’s a recent discovery that you can’t keep quiet about?
There's a depth to the best video games — games with player-driven narratives — that I hadn't, until recently, been aware of. As an art form, video games seem to be a party many are arriving late to, but a party that's just getting going. It's a form approaching its golden age, and as Golden Age Hollywood attracted people like Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Graham Greene, so too will video games.
Words to live by?
My inheritance, incidentally, has only been debt so far. Massive debt. ‘Don't let the bastards grind you down’ are words I live by, and Tony Soprano's ‘Every day is a gift, but it doesn't have to be socks’.
Tell us something about yourself that surprises people...
For someone who's spent half their life abroad, my foreign language skills are woeful. I think I enjoy the disconnect, and you soon get used to being manipulated like a dog at the vets by fellow-monolingualist doctors.
What’s your piece in this issue about?
‘Somebody’ is the story of a gifted young ballad singer plucked from the suburban dancehalls of 1960s London and sent, compass and map in hand, to The Top — only to get himself lost along the way.
Issue 15 is available to order over at our webstore now, or in good bookshops.