Big move to small screen
Jenni Fagan reveals she is focusing on TV projects for the next couple of years – including adaptations of two of her own novels.
Irvine Welsh announced in November that Fagan would be working to turn his novel The Blade Artist into a TV series. Set 20 years after Trainspotting, it visits Franco Begbie (Robert Carlyle), now living as a painter and sculptor in California under the name of Jim Francis.
Fagan tells P.S: “I have finished five really hard books in a row and have pushed myself as hard as I could with each of them. Now I am doing TV adaptations of two of my novels and the TV adaptation of The Blade Artist for Irvine Welsh.”
All three series are with the same production company, she reveals but, ahead of official announcements, she declines to say which of her novels will appear on the small screen.
An exhibition of Fagan’s artwork will go on display at the Bone Library at Edinburgh’s Summerhall, where she was the Gavin Wallace Fellowship writer-in-residence from 2019-20. During her time there, she worked on a new book of poetry, The Bone Library, the novel Luckenbooth, and wrote a series of texts for walls in the building and engraved texts on bones.
She explains: “The Bone Library was the training school for veterinary surgeons across Europe. When I was there I was trying to bridge the old with the new and find practical ways to contribute as a writer.”
Her opportunity came when she was told there were “old, inferior” bones in the attic. Embracing their imperfections, she set about engraving the bones in gold.
She says: “My poetry is up around the building in gold, and my bone artwork is going on permanent display in Summerhall. I am really inspired by art. I love art.”