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Shola von Reinhold

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Shola von Reinhold is a Scottish writer. Her debut novel, LOTE (2020), was published by Jacaranda Books during the publisher's #Twentyin2020 campaign, an initiative to "publish 20 titles by 20 Black British writers in one year".[1] LOTE won the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Life and education

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Shola von Reinhold was born in Glasgow.[2] She completed a Creative Writing MLitt at Glasgow, where she held a Jessica Yorke Writing Scholarship.[3][4] She also studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins.[3]

Shola von Reinhold describes herself as Black, working-class and queer.[5] Interviews and author biographies have used both "they"[6][7][8] and "she"[2][3][9] pronouns for von Reinhold, who has discussed the advantages of "indefiniteness" when assigning pronouns in her fiction.[10] Her date of birth is sometimes given as 1892.[4][11] She has said that she gives "lots of different ages" for herself and that such fictional and shifting autobiographies provide a "protective veil".[11] She has also discussed how Black artists have been creative with their biographies as a means "of pleasure and survival".[12]

LOTE

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LOTE's protagonist Mathilda Adamarola is a researcher in a London archive who sets out to recover "forgotten artistic and literary figures of the past",[13] especially "Black, queer, trans, and/or femme figures".[12] She calls these figures "Transfixions”.[13][14] These "Transfixions" include both fictional and real figures.[12] The real names include "1920s aesthete and socialite Stephen Tennant and the Bright Young Things", and Roberte Horth, an early 20th century writer from French Guiana who lived in Paris.[14]

While sifting through an uncatalogued collection of photographs in the National Portrait Gallery archive, Mathilda encounters Hermia Druitt, a forgotten Black Scottish poet (invented by von Reinhold).[7] This leads her to join an artist residency in the small European town of Dun, where she joins forces with other residents to "deep-dive" into Druitt and the associated cult of "the Luxuries".[12] Mathilda's approach to understanding Druitt's life and work relates to processes of "literary recovery" practiced by "feminist scholars in the 1970s and 1980s who sought to correct the male biases of the British literary canon."[13]

In the novel, decadence, glamour or luxury are forms of "resistance [...] an opposition to the Whiteness that has always told Black people that they are too ornamented",[14][6][10] with the protagonists identifying how "this prejudice has its roots in colonialist contempt for African culture".[15]

Other work

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In 2021, von Reinhard contributed an essay, 'The Scintillations Of Black Carnelian Grotto (the Individual) And Theire Journey To Black Carnelian Grotto (the Place)', to Peggy Ahwesh Vision Machines, a study of US artist and filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh.[16]

In 2023, she contributed 'Collaboration x Commission' to Pippa Garner ACT Like You Know Me, a study of US artist Pippa Garner.[17][18]

Awards and honours

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Selected bibliography

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  • LOTE, 2020

References

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  1. ^ "#TwentyIn2020: Black Writers, British Voices". Jacaranda Books. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Lote by Shola Reinhard". Jacaranda Books. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  3. ^ a b c "Shola von Reinhold". Books from Scotland. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  4. ^ a b "Shola von Reinhold". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  5. ^ von Reinhold, Shola. "Revisiting the Dandy Canon, From Baudelaire to Bloomsbury". Frieze. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  6. ^ a b "Interview: Shola von Reinhold". The Modernist Review. 3 July 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  7. ^ a b "Shola von Reinhold's 'LOTE'". The White Review. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  8. ^ "Inventing an Archive". Novel Dialogue. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  9. ^ "Is a socialite just a scammer who succeeded?". Document Journal. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  10. ^ a b Dytor, Frankie. "Interview with Shola von Reinhold: 'It felt like Hermia Fabulated herself out of the archive'". Lucy Writers Platform. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  11. ^ a b "The Many Lives of Shola von Reinhold". Beyond Noise. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  12. ^ a b c d "Shola von Reinhold: Ornamenting Biographies". Various Artists. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  13. ^ a b c "LOTE – Shola von Reinhold". Full Stop. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  14. ^ a b c Thomas, Skye Arundhati (17 June 2020). "Glamour and Resistance in Shola von Reinhold's 'Lote'". Frieze. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  15. ^ "LOTE by Shola von Reinhold review – a celebration of eccentricity". The Guardian. 10 June 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  16. ^ Peggy Ahwesh Vision Machines. Spike Island and Mousse Publishing. 2021. ISBN 9788867494835.
  17. ^ Pippa Garner ACT Like You Know Me. Bierke. 2023. ISBN 978-3948546113.
  18. ^ "Act Like You Know Me by Pippa Garner". Novembre. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  19. ^ "LOTE by Shola von Reinhold wins the Republic of Consciousness Prize!". Jacaranda Books. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  20. ^ "Republic of Consciousness prize shares £20,000 pot among longlist". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
  21. ^ "Von Reinhold and Ní Ghríofa win £10k James Tait Black prizes | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
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