Richard Milward

{{Short description|English novelist}} {{for|the Canon of Windsor|Richard Milward (priest)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Multiple issues| {{BLP sources|date=October 2014}} {{Notability|Biographies|date=October 2020}} }} {{Infobox writer  |name = Richard Milward |image = |imagesize = |caption = |pseudonym = |birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=yes|1984|10|26}} |birth_place = Middlesbrough, England |occupation = Writer |nationality = English |alma_mater = |residence = |notableworks = ''Apples'' |genre = Novel, play, short story |movement = Modernism, post-modernism |influences = |influenced = |website = {{URL|http://www.richardmilward.com/}} }}

'''Richard Milward''' (born 26 October 1984 in Middlesbrough) is an English novelist. His debut novel ''Apples'' was published by Faber in 2007. He has also written ''Ten Storey Love Song,'' ''Kimberly's Capital Punishment,'' and ''Man-Eating Typewriter''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Richard Milward |url=https://www.richardmilward.com/ |access-date=2023-06-30 |website=Richard Milward |language=en-US}}</ref>

==Early life== Raised in Guisborough, (Redcar and Cleveland), Milward attended Laurence Jackson School and Prior Pursglove College. He then studied fine art at Byam Shaw School of Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London.

==Career== Milward cites ''Trainspotting'' by Irvine Welsh as the book that made him want to write and Jack Kerouac, Richard Brautigan and Hunter S. Thompson as influences. He joined fellow Teessider Michael Smith in writing a column for ''Dazed & Confused'' magazine.

===''Apples''=== {{Main|Apples (novel)}} Milward's debut novel is an account of teenage life on a Middlesbrough housing estate.<ref name="Guardian">{{Cite news |last1=Llewellyn Smith |first1=Caspar |title=A night out with the young bard of Boro |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/feb/15/richard-milward-apples-intervoew-ten-storey-love-song |accessdate=19 October 2020 |work=The Guardian |date=15 February 2009}}</ref> It is narrated in the first person by several characters (including a butterfly), but mainly by Adam and Eve, two school students. Adam is a shy, ungainly youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder, a love of The Beatles, and a violent father. He believes himself to be in love with Eve, who is an attractive and promiscuous hard drinker and drug user.

===''Man-Eating Typewriter''=== Milward's 2023 novel ''Man-Eating Typewriter'' is notable for its extensive use of Polari, a form of slang commonly used by the gay community in England until the late 1960s. Milward's novel is about a struggling publishing house, Glass Eye Press, that has been contacted by the mysterious Raymond M. Novak. Novak announces that he will commit a major crime within the year, and will allow Glass Eye Press to publish his memoirs after the crime has been committed. Novak's memoirs are written entirely in Polari. Throughout the memoir, there are footnotes from the employees of Glass Eye Press. These are initially used to guide the reader through Novak's eccentric use of Polari but grow into a narrative told alongside Novak's memoirs.

The novel earned positive reviews. Boyd Tonkin of ''Financial Times'' called the novel "a mind-bending performance that unspools in flavoursome Polari"<ref>{{Cite news |last=Tonkin |first=Boyd |date=2023-03-31 |title=Man-Eating Typewriter — the seediness of sixties Soho |work=Financial Times |url=https://www.ft.com/content/273a4acb-3a57-4a1d-b956-51f9c59852d8 |access-date=2023-08-02}}</ref> In ''The Guardian'', Neil Bartlett wrote that Milward "produced that rarest of all things on the modern fiction bookshelf: a genuinely exhilarating entertainment. The linguistic invention borders on the dazzling, the potted social history drops its names with wit and verve, and the whole thing is both laugh-out-loud funny and authentically disgusting."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Bartlett |first=Neil |date=2023-03-18 |title=Man-Eating Typewriter by Richard Milward review – homage to 60s gay counterculture |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/18/man-eating-typewriter-by-richard-milward-review-homage-to-60s-gay-counterculture |access-date=2023-08-02 |issn=0261-3077}}</ref>

It was one of six novels shortlisted for the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Goldsmiths Prize |url=https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-prize/ |access-date=2023-10-04 |website=Goldsmiths, University of London |language=en}}</ref>

==Bibliography== ===Novels=== *''Apples'' (2007) *''Ten Storey Love Song'' (2009) *''Kimberly's Capital Punishment'' (2012) *''Man-Eating Typewriter'' (2023)

==References== {{Reflist|30em}}

==External links== *{{official website|http://www.richardmilward.com/}} *[http://www.faber.co.uk/author/richard-milward/ Faber author page] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20110517063445/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1698805.ece ''Times'' feature 'Teenage kicks', April 28, 2007] *[http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/irvine-welsh-of-the-boro/ ''3:AM Magazine'' interview (02/2008)]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Milward, Richard}} Category:1984 births Category:21st-century English novelists Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the Byam Shaw School of Art Category:Alumni of Central Saint Martins Category:British postmodern writers Category:English male novelists Category:People from Guisborough Category:Writers from North Yorkshire Category:21st-century English male writers