Debut novelist Paul Mendez has scored an instant hit with Rainbow Milk. It tells two wildly contrasting stories which seem to have no connection at first: how a young Jamaican couple come to sail to the UK on the Windrush to make a new home in the Black Country and, in the present day, how a young gay man of Jamaican heritage is “disfellowshipped” by his Jehovah’s Witness congregation and family and loses then finds himself in London. Paul talks engagingly about the book, about how its publishing coincided with the great wave of Black Lives Matter marches and of his hopes for a bright new future for black voices in UK writing. He also talks about an early passion for Cornwall! (We just knew he was a good choice for the festival.)

Credits: Edited Dan Hall. Music: Love Birds on a Train by Helen Porter.

Realising the pandemic obliged this year’s North Cornwall Book Festival to be postponed to October 2021, NCBF has made a series of short films featuring the home and writing lives of the authors who would have spoken in 2020. These films were made with funding from Arts Council England’s emergency fund and FEAST. www.ncornbookfest.org.

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By mike