Publications
QueenSpark Books - publishing life histories for the local community, by Lorraine Sitzia, published November 1997 in The Local Historian (vol. 27, no. 4, article, pp.218-224) View Online
Abstract:This article describes the work of QueenSpark Books, a community publishing group which works in Brighton and Hove with local people to publish their life stories. The article gives a historical introduction to QueenSpark, from its beginnings as a local campaign to stop a casino development, to its position today as one of the largest and most successful community publishing groups in the country. QueenSpark's involvement in written life histories and oral histories aims to give ordinary people a voice, and to present an aspect of history which is often overlooked or rejected by commercial publishers. The structure of the organisation is described, with particular emphasis on the processes by which local life histories are produced and marketed by a team of volunteers. Two of QueenSpark's most recent publications, Catching Stories: Voices from the Brighton Fishing Community and Take Him Away, are used as examples to illustrate the types of books produced and the production process itself. The former is the result of a community oral history project, the latter an autobiographical account of childhood written by an ex-convict. These two books highlight alternative approaches to the presentation of life stories. The article emphasises the empowering nature of this work, both for the authors and the book-producers, and argues that life histories of ordinary people can give others the courage to write or tell their stories, and help us to question the past and to ask 'whose history are we presented with?'.