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The unfolding story
Grace Jolliffe

JUST picking up a leaflet can sometimes open up possibilities for a writer.

Grace Jolliffe little expected that when she read a publisher’s flyer seeking book proposals that Willy Russell (Educating Rita) would option the resultant novel for a film.

She said: "I was in Liverpool at the Writing On The Wall scriptwriting festival and I saw a leaflet with a little profile of Tindall Street Press who were looking for stories from the English regions --- culturally specific stories, as opposed to London-centred stories."

What happened next was one of those dreams writers often indulge in whilst whiling away the hours between inspirations.

Piggy Monk Square was an unpublished first novel thrown into an old filing cabinet in the garden shed in Grace’s County Wicklow home where her family had re-located from Liverpool with their Irish Dad and English Mam in the 1970s when she was 17 years old.

"When I saw they were looking for regional work I re-wrote the first four chapters and sent it off," said Grace. "They said they were mad busy and would not read it for months and a week later they said they were interested in reading the rest of the manuscript! But it was dog rough, having been written eight years before. I re-did the whole thing and sent it in and it was accepted and then it was published. Great."

Not only that; but Willy Russell took an option on the film rights and attended the Liverpool launch of what was Grace’s first book.

The story is set in 1970s Toxteth where nine-year–old Sparra has nowhere to play. Staying home is not an option since her parents are constantly bickering. Sparra and her pal Debbie make a bombed-out house their special hideaway and the story unfolds.

Willy Russell said the book is a stunning well-written novel. "I didn’t want it to end. It’s tense, joyous, terrifying, comic, tender, magic and tragic – just like childhood itself."

As a teenager newly arrived in Ireland from Liverpool, Grace was first published in a small magazine which was sold door to door in local towns. She continued to be published regularly while attending Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design to study film and television, specialising in scriptwriting.

Her graduation film won the Jesuit award for best Irish drama. "It’s a dark little story about a little girl being messed about psychologically in a family, tricked. It’s not biographical, my family is absolutely perfect!"

Another film followed called Mercy that was about a woman struggling to cope with a mother who has Alzheimer’s Disease. It also won a Jesuit award for best Irish drama and the Manchester Film Festival Voters Award as well.

She then had a lucky break with Ireland’s newest TV station TV3 when they commissioned her to write and make a documentary called Caught in a Web about paedophiles using the web to access children through chatrooms. "It was in 1999 when the internet was really starting to take off. And it was coming into the awareness that it could be used for bad as well as good."

Unusually, Grace was commissioned straight out of college with no real experience. "I really did appreciate the chance and their decision to fund such a controversial subject. I did not have a documentary track record; but I had worked on other people’s documentaries."

Research for a film called Nowhere Land produced material for the documentary. Nowhere Land, the film, was about a boy who had run away from home and was trying to survive on the streets. It went on to be screened at film festivals and was shortlisted for UK CAPs writer of the year.

"That’s quite a big competition in the UK and it was nice to be shortlisted," said Grace.

Meanwhile, and away from the excitement of awards and book launches, Grace writes children’s fiction for younger listeners on Fiction 15, a weekly 6.30pm slot on RTE 1 radio.

"I used to read the material myself in Dublin; but they moved production down to Cork and they use actors now to do it. Sometimes it’s a boy’s story and then a girl’s story with a few characters, so actors would have a better range in getting the voices."

Accepting that she has empathy for a child’s point of view; Grace said she finds it very easy to write from that perspective, for some reason. "Neverland got arts council funding; I had sent in another script as well, with no children in it, and the one that was picked was the one with kids in it."

While her new book is narrated by a nine-year-old, Grace said her next book has no children in it, whatsoever, and a third book is the same.

"I wanted to do something different. It’s ironic really that when you write screenplays, suddenly somebody is interested in the novel as a film. I have done all this work on screenplays and I thought I was getting away from it for a while. But I am back in it again, sideways now, with a film option sold to Willy Russell."

Film options do not include using the original novelist as scriptwriter, but for icining on the cake, Grace was asked to write the screenpay of her book.

Meanwhile, Piggy Monk Square is on sale.

© Brendan Nolan 2006

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