CURRENT
• Preparing for The Shape of a Pocket for John Berger, 6 April, 2025,
3-5pm, Upstairs at the Gatehouse.
• Preparing new play Over My Dead Body for a run Upstairs at the Gatehouse.
• Preparing for my show 'Landscape and the Inner World', Tavistock Centre Gallery, December 2024.
• My play Blood, Gold and Oil ran at Riverside Studios, London, in summer 2023.
A monologue by Douglas Clark-Wood as T.E Lawrence can be viewed online.
• New short story 'The Grey Eye' soon to be published in the new anthology edited by David Erdos, The Story Sown Far, available through Amazon.
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New paintings.
• Interview with London Writers' Salon 'Starting a Writing Life Later'.
• Our Friend Julian, an online event in support
of Julian Assange on World Press Day, introduced by Brian Eno, is available on YouTube
• Published for lockdown: my tiny letter for the Royal Society of Literature's 'Only Connect' series was published as their 50th edition. It can be read at International Times
• My novella From the Shadow is scheduled for publication in 2025.
• Ambassador for The Blake Cottage Trust
‘Jan Woolf has a sexy, vigorous imagination and the art to realise all her good ideas. I love her writing.’ Edmund White
My short play 'Streaming the Dead' launched on 17 October 2020, at International Times. Ten minutes to perform and less time to read, the vital spark was anger as I watched the 75th anniversary of D Day on June 6th 2020. As war veterans lay dying of Covid in care homes I thought of lungs - and water. The play, published by Pentameters Press, has a limited print run. Just £4 - (the cost of a glass of Prosecco in a pub).
Order a signed and numbered copy for £4, post and packing included.
Stories - short and long - setting ordinary people against big themes: war, loss, betrayal, contemporary politics and the search for fulfilment. Like the author's first collection (Fugues on a Funny Bone) they are funny and acerbic - and include her Royal Court short play examining the Blair legacy, which Heathcote Williams called 'a gem.'
Stories range from a Rambler’s Christmas day walk, a childless senior sneaking into a mothers’ and babies’ only film, a bitter family argument over the EU referendum, management consultant wonkery, and the down but not quite out of homeless street life. All are rooted in experience and activism.
Reviews: International Times and Morning Star.
‘Jan Woolf writes from the heart, bringing voices from the edge filled with fragile love and humanity. Her work is full of compassion, solidarity and humour.’ —A.L. Kennedy
Read 'Once Around Uncle Ho' on the Morning Star website.
Listen to 'Tell Not Show', read by actor Peter Wight.
Fugues on a Funny Bone
A collection of linked stories inspired by a London pupil referral unit, with accompanying images by sculptor Richard Niman.
‘If that sounds worthy or didactic, it isn’t. The language is beautiful – Jan Woolf is a painter, and her love of imagery comes through in the writing… She has also worked with troubled children, and her empathy for them also comes through in the stories.’ Helen Smith
Order a copy for £10, post and packing included.
Read a story. 'Beth in Venice' with art work by Richard Niman
Jan has also read much of her own work, often with actors, most recently at the Freud Museum and the ICA, and held the first Harold Pinter Writers’ residency at the Hackney Empire, where her play Porn Crackers was directed by Ruth Boswell.
She is a critic, reviewer and editor, and has published various pieces of journalism, drawn from a life of political activism and teaching.
Jan edited many books for the Muswell Press, and ran ‘Off the Shelf’ at Blacks club Soho from 2011 to 2014 – a writer’s development project for the Writers Guild of Great Britain, of which she is an active member.