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CV: Change to the published script

by Chris Osuh
4/ 3/2005

^" My very first job was picking blackberries and feeding geese for 25p an hour at a farm in Biggin in Derbyshire. I was nine.

When I was 19 I went to Oxford where I studied physics and philosophy. I ended up being banned from the union while I was there, because of a performance art piece me and a friend staged that involved the mutilation of a dead rabbit. I also ended being "rusticated", kicked out of halls for some harmless pranks.

After Oxford I had a few jobs, working as a general labourer for Harrow Council, the "chain gang" I called it, I dug holes, chopped down trees and laid cables.

At one stage I did bar work and hotel work and spent a year running a furniture design store with some friends in North London, which was fun.

I always had an interest in literature, but I didn't even do an English A-level, I had a complete lack of knowledge.

I came to Manchester to do an MA in contemporary poetry, which was a complete switch.

In the mid-nineties I started doing some book reviewing and through freelancing became listings editor, then deputy editor at City Life.

I first became involved with publishing around 1998,through Carcanet Press and the City Life Book of Manchester Stories, which I successfully pitched to Penguin.

I set up Comma Press to pursue the series, and left journalism for good in 2003.

The writing scene is very healthy the moment - I almost think there aren't enough presses to support it.

I don't miss journalism - it's pretty stressful and I didn't feel I could control my work.

We do get sent a lot of rubbish, but I probably bring that on myself.

At Comma we really try to support innovation in literature - we did a novel last year that was set entirely in a ditch, and we published the first novel, by Tariq Mehmood, to ever feature the Punjabi dialect Pothwari. ^"