December 2025:
Books read this year: Acts of Creation, on art and motherhood by Hettie Judah, The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, Tender: The Imperfect Art of Caring by Penny Wincer, Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor, The Wedding Group by Elizabeth Taylor, In A Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor, The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida, The Life, Old Age and Death of a Working Class Woman by Didier Eribon, The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor, The Drama of Being a Child by Alice Miller, Clay Walls by Kim Ronyoung, Mothers, Father and Others by Siri Hustvedt, Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser, The Art of Creative Thinking by Rod Judkins, The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy, Barcelona by Mary Costello, The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing, Blue Nights by Joan Didion, My Battle of Hastings by Xiaolu Guo, Feminism by Deborah Cameron, Openings by Lucy Caldwell, After Kathy Acker by Chris Kraus, Supporting Act by Agnes Lidbeck, If Only by Vigdis Hjorth, Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones
December 2024:
Books read this year: Take What You Need by Idra Novey, Peter Davis by Celine Davis & Bridget Heriz, 36 Hours by Fiona Mason, Girlfriends & Post-Feminist Sisterhood by Alison Winch, Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, My Katherine Mansfield Project by Kirsty Gunn, Arrangements in Blue by Amy Key, The Mirror & The Palette by Jennifer Higgie, Troubling Love by Elenena Ferrante, The Night Always Comes by Willy Vlautin, Catland by Kathryn Hughes, All Fours by Miranda July, Orwell’s Rose by Rebecca Solnitt, The Reluctant Carer by The Reluctant Carer, Antartica by Claire Keegan, Doppleganger by Naomi Klein, Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, Live Like Your Head’s On Fire by Sally-Anne Lomas, The Voyage Home by Pat Barker, The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt, Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, Shattered by Hanif Kureshi.
March 2024:
I will be running a workshop on time and how to use it in novel and short story writing at The National Centre for Writing, Norwich, Norfolk, on Saturday 16th March 10.00- 12.30. https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/events/how-to-write-the-passing-of-time-in-fiction-with-lynne-bryan/
January 2024:
Judge for the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2023. Category winners are: The Meaning of Geese by Nick Acheson, Norwich Textiles A Global Story 1750-1840 by Michael Nix, Foxash by Kate Worsley, The Human Portion by Nicola Warwick, The Golden Mango Tree by Karen Li, Sit Still Timmy! by Tim MacWilliam.
December 2023:
Books read this year: Lucy by the Sea by Elisabeth Strout, Turbulence by David Szalay, Push (My Father, Polio and Me) by Sarah Passingham, A Horse at Night: On Writing by Amina Cain, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria Mackenzie, The Trouble with Happiness & Other Stories by Tove Ditlevsen, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Philippa Perry, Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu, Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women by Victoria Smith, The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, Assembly by Natasha Brown, Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment by Matrix, The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel, Dog-hearted: Essays on Our Fierce and Familiar Companions by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan and Jessica J Lee, Aftermath by Preti Taneja, Seven Steeples by Sara Baume, O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker, The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, The End of Eddy by Edouard Louis, Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin, The Master by Colm Toibin, Scenes from 68 Years (playscript) by Hanna Khalil, Tales From A Master’s Notebook, edited by Philip Horne, Daisy Miller by Henry James, Will & Testament by Vigdis Hjorth.
February 2023
Iron Man wins the East Anglian Book of the Year Award 2022
January 2023
Iron Man is the Biography and Memoir category winner, East Anglian Book Awards 2022
Lynne will be reading from Iron Man at the Lighthouse issue 25 launch party 25th January 2023. See https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lighthouse-25-launch-party
December 2022:
Books read this year: The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, Let me Tell You What I mean by Joan Didion, Maid by Stephanie Land, Sempre Susan: A Memory of Susan Sontag by Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, Her Body & Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante, The Prentice Boy by Ray Rumsby, Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villa Lobos, A Sister’s Story by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, Portrait of an Unknown Lady by Maria Gainza, My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley, The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, Oxblood by Tom Benn, Address Unknown by Kressmann Taylor, Something Out of Place: Women and Disgust by Eimear McBride, Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, A Shock by Keith Ridgeway, Oh William! by Elisabeth Strout, Modern Times by Cathy Sweeney, What Do Women Want by Susie Orbach and Luise Eichenbaum, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner.
October 2022:
Iron Man is shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards 2022
Extracts from Iron Man have featured on newwriting.net and mercurius.one and in the magazines A Radical Notion and Lighthouse Journal.
January 2022:
Leigh Chambers interviewed me about Iron Man for BookMark on Cambridge 105 radio https://cambridge105.co.uk/bookmark-09-01-2022/
December 2021:
Books read this year: The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante, Free Woman by Lora Feigel, Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor, Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza, Dead Girls by Selva Almada, Mothers by Chris Power, Happening by Annie Ernaux, Having and Being Had by Eula Biss, Real Estate by Deborah Levy, Lost Cat by Mary Gaitskill, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez, Things Are Against us by Lucy Ellmann, Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz, Sad Little Men by Richard Beard, Material Girls by Kathleen Stock, Trans by Helen Joyce, Feminism for Women by Julie Blindel, Major/Minor by Alba Arikha, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, Second Place by Rachel Cusk, Apeirgon by Column McCann
November 2021:
Iron Man, my memoir about living with my disabled father is published by Salt.
July 2021
‘Surfacing’, my essay about Clare Jarrett’s solo exhibition The Sorting Table at The Cut, Halesworth, is published in the exhibition catalogue.
December 2020:
Books read this year: A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill, The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein, The Vegetarian by Hang Chang, The Man who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, Self-Portrait by Celia Paul, My Mother Laughs by Chantal Akerman, Weather by Jenny Offill, Girl by Edna O’Brien, Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo, Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, Intimations six essays by Zadie Smith, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes, Motherwell by Deborah Orr, Death a La Fenice by Donna Leon, After Midnight by Irmgard Keun, Indelicacy by Amina Cain, In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
December 2019
Books read this year: The Silence of The Girls by Pat Barker, The Milkman by Anna Burns, 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret/Maam Darling by Craig Brown, To Leave With The Reindeer by Olivia Rosenthal, Late In The Day by Tessa Hadley, Notes to Self by Emile Pine, Bottled Goods By Sophie van Llewyn, The Gift by Lewis Hyde, Now Now Louison by Jean Fremon, Garden by Derek Jarman, Attrib by Eley Williams, Exposure by Olivia Sudjic, Chavs by Owen Jones, Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey, Voices in the Evening by Natalia Ginzburg, Bluets by Maggie Nelson, Daddy Issues by Katherine Angel, Modern Nature by Derek Jarman, The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien, An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, Good Day by Vesna Main, The Years by Annie Ernaux, Worlds from World’s End by Joanna Walsh, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, Die My Love by Ariana Harwicz, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
June 2019
Salt publishers sign up my memoir Iron Man for publication in 2021.
May 2019
Research trip to Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot garden, in the vicinity of Capalbio, Italy for current novel-in-progress.
Jan 2019
Awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice Grant from Arts Council England. This grant will enable me to work on my novel, provisionally called Forest of Sisters, which is an exploration of visionary gardens, including gardens by Niki de Saint Phalle, Derek Jarman and Ian Hamilton Finlay.