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{{short description|British novelist, writer and editor (born 1964)}}
{{For|other people named Tony White|Tony White (disambiguation)}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
'''Tony White''' (born 1964 in Farnham, Surrey) is a British novelist, writer and editor. Best known for his novel ''Foxy-T'' ([[Faber and Faber|Faber]], 2003), described by [[Toby Litt]] in 2006 as his 'favourite British novel from the past ten years',<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/24/fiction|title=The 25 best books from the backlist|date=24 April 2006|accessdate=9 November 2017|website=Theguardian.com}}</ref> White has been called a 'serious, engaging voice of the modern city'.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/sep/27/featuresreviews.guardianreview21|title=Review: Foxy-T by Tony White|first=Michael|last=Moorcock|date=27 September 2003|accessdate=9 November 2017|website=Theguardian.com}}</ref> Since 2010, he has been chair of London’s arts radio station [[Resonance FM]].

==Fiction==
White's first novels ''Road Rage'' (Low Life Books, 1997), ''Satan Satan Satan'' (Attack Books!, 1999), and ''Charlieunclenorfolktango'' (Codex, 1999) – 'bizarre, depressing and unreadable'<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n07/christopher-tayler/the-crimz-and-the-killers-and-the-nonsiz-and-the-rapiss-and-the-arsoniss-and-shit|title='the crimz & the killers & the nonsiz & the rapiss & the arsoniss & shit'|first=Christopher|last=Tayler|date=30 March 2000|issue=7 |pages=35–36|accessdate=9 November 2017|journal=London Review of Books|volume=22 }}</ref> – have been located on the ‘marginal terrain of avant-pulp’, where writers such as [[Stewart Home]] and [[Victor Headley]] 'channel the energy and drive of pornography, the skinhead paperbacks of Richard Allen and the cartoon anarchism of Leo Baxendale's [[The Beano|Beano]] comics to escape the stylistic and rhetorical corsets of the metropolitan novel.'.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3613775/A-1984-far-more-grotesque-than-that-envisaged-by-Orwell.html|title=A 1984 far more grotesque than that envisaged by Orwell|first=Sukhdev|last=Sandhu|date=14 March 2004|accessdate=9 November 2017|website=Telegraph.co.uk}}</ref> In 2006 the Russian publisher, T-ough Press faced criminal prosecution for publishing Russian language translations of ''Satan Satan Satan'' and ''Road Rage''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/interview.htm|title=secret files of the Stewart Home Society, shamanism, video, filme, book, Come Before Christ & Murder Love|website=Stewarthomesociety.org|accessdate=9 November 2017}}</ref>

Both the title and the triangular relationship at the heart of ''Foxy-T'' recall [[D. H. Lawrence]]'s 1922 novella [[The Fox (novella)|The Fox]], but it was White's use of a hybridised, street language of London's East End in which the novel is entirely written, which drew most attention.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sounds-of-the-street-how-authors-are-turning-to-slang-narratives-as-a-more-authentic-mode-of-storytelling-2231229.html|title=Sounds of the street: How authors are turning to slang narratives as a|date=4 March 2011|website=Independent.co.uk|accessdate=9 November 2017}}</ref> Some reviewers referred to it as ‘broken, rhythmic patois’, or ‘Benglish’, and White was interviewed about his use of language by Ed Stourton on Radio 4’s [[Today (BBC Radio 4)|Today]] programme.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOGjhAilL6k |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211213/NOGjhAilL6k |archive-date=2021-12-13 |url-status=live|title=Foxy-T_TodayProgramme.dv|last=TWLondon2007|date=21 July 2010|accessdate=9 November 2017|publisher=[[YouTube]]}}{{cbignore}}</ref> White himself has written that it was the
:language that I was hearing all around me in east London at the time, where white, Asian and other mainly (but not exclusively) young people were adopting or hybridising Black British language and in so doing were disrupting what had been the very necessary identity politics of the 1970s and 80s: a disruption typified for me by young Bangladeshi rudeboys calling each other ‘Rasta’ and most easily illustrated by the fact that it became impossible to determine the ethnicity of an unseen speaker (e.g. someone sitting behind you on the bus) by the sound of their voice.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://pieceofpaperpress.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/foxy-t-archive-3/|title=Foxy-T archive #3 – 'street talk' scare stories|date=21 July 2010|website=Pieceofpaperpress.wordpress.com|accessdate=9 November 2017}}</ref>

White’s novella, ''Dicky Star and the Garden Rule'' (Forma, 2012), was commissioned to accompany a series of works by the artists [[Jane and Louise Wilson]] reflecting upon the 25th anniversary of the [[Chernobyl disaster]]. Set in [[Leeds]] it was written using an [[Oulipo]]-style [[constrained writing|constraint]], in this case a 'mandated vocabulary,' with each daily chapter told using all of the answers to the [[The Guardian|Guardian]] Quick Crossword from that day in 1986.

Another novella, ''Missorts Volume II'' (Situations, 2012) was published as a free ebook to accompany White's Missorts app, a permanent, GPS-triggered, immersive soundwork for mobile phones that is activated in the [[Redcliffe, Bristol|Redcliffe]] area of Bristol as a [[public art]] work.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.missorts.com/|title=Missorts|website=Missorts.com|accessdate=9 November 2017}}</ref> ''Missorts Volume II'' follows the lives of four characters affected by a derelict former Royal Mail sorting office adjacent to [[Bristol Temple Meads railway station]].

White co-edited the short story collection ''Croatian Nights'' ([[Serpent's Tail]], 2005), with Borivoj Radaković<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftdB4hEDQUE |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211213/ftdB4hEDQUE |archive-date=2021-12-13 |url-status=live|title=Sjaj epohe - Borivoj Radaković|last=VBZCroatia|date=15 July 2009|accessdate=9 November 2017|publisher=[[YouTube]]}}{{cbignore}}</ref> and [[Matt Thorne]], which featured both British, Croatian and Serbian authors, and ''Britpulp!'' (Sceptre, 1999). His own short stories have appeared in various periodicals, exhibition catalogues and collections including ''All Hail the New Puritans'' (4th Estate), edited by [[Nicholas Blincoe]] and [[Matt Thorne]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://pieceofpaperpress.wordpress.com/short-stories/|title=Short Stories|date=17 May 2011|website=Pieceofpaperpress.wordpress.com|accessdate=9 November 2017}}</ref>

The 2018 novel ''The Fountain in the Forest'' opens in the form of a modern [[police procedural]] but White includes throughout a [[Constrained writing|mandated vocabulary]] (in the style of the [[Oulipo]] movement) to reflect particular episodes of recent social history.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Sandhu|first1=Sukhdev|title=The Fountain in the Forest by Tony White review – alternative social history|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/24/fountain-in-the-forest-tony-white-review|website=[[the Guardian]]|language=en|date=24 February 2018}}</ref>

==Other work==
In 2006, White’s ''Another Fool in the Balkans: In the Footsteps of [[Rebecca West]]'' (Cadogan, 2006) was published; a travelogue 'from Belgrade to Split, reporting the words of a people confused by shame, pride and hope, trying to make sense of brutal murder and hatred, managing to create something universally valuable from their lives and their history' in the post-Yugoslav republics.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3652337/Confusion-and-courage-of-the-soul.html|title=Confusion and courage of the soul|first=Michael|last=Moorcock|date=8 May 2006|accessdate=9 November 2017|website=Telegraph.co.uk}}</ref>

White has been writer in residence at the [[Science Museum (London)|Science Museum]], from which came the story ''Albertopolis Disparu'' (Science Museum, 2009), and the [[Leverhulme Trust]] writer in residence at the [[UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies]]. In 2010 he collaborated with [[Blast Theory]] to write ''Ivy4evr'', an SMS-based, interactive drama for young people broadcast by [[Channel 4]] in October 2010, which was nominated for a [[British Interactive Media Association]] (BIMA)award in 2011.

In 1994, White founded [[artist's book]] imprint '''Piece of Paper Press''', and has invited artists and writers, (including [[Liliane Lijn]], Pavel Büchler, [[Tim Etchells]], [[Elizabeth Magill]], and [[Alison Turnbull]]) to create books made from a single sheet of A4 paper, folded three times, stapled and cut to produce an A7, 16-page, photocopied edition. Several of these artists' books are included within [[Arnolfini, Bristol|Arnolfini]]'s collection of artists' books held at [[Bristol Archives]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Records of Arnolfini: Books by artists whose name begins with W|url=http://archives.bristol.gov.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=43371%2fDept%2fBks%2f1%2fW%2f1&pos=4|publisher=[[Bristol Archives]]|accessdate=10 March 2018}}</ref> He was [[Arts Council England]] Interdisciplinary Arts Officer between 1999 and 2007, overseeing the ''Pioneers in Art and Science'' DVD series, working particularly closely with UK film director [[Ken McMullen (film director)|Ken McMullen]] and the artist [[Gustav Metzger]]. Between 1998 and 2007, White was literary editor of [[The Idler (1993)|The Idler]] magazine.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.3ammagazine.com/litarchives/2002_apr/interview_tony_white.html 2002 interview]
*[http://www.ideasfactory.com/writing/features/writ_feature24.htm 2003 interview]
*[http://diffusion.org.uk/?tag=tony-white Tony White at Diffusion]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Tony}}
[[Category:1964 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:21st-century English novelists]]
[[Category:Pulp fiction writers]]
[[Category:British art critics]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century English male writers]]

Tony White (writer) - Revision history

imported>GoodDay: Intro