Three new editions will air this autumn on BBC One with the programmes looking into the world of writer and former Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, artist and educator Sonia Boyce and writer, fashion designer and Booker Prize-winner Douglas Stuart.
The new series starts on 31 October with imagine… Malorie Blackman: What If?
Alan Yentob follows one of Britain’s best loved writers, Malorie Blackman, former Children’s Laureate and now the first children’s writer to win the prestigious Pen Pinter Prize (previous recipients include Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood). Bold, provocative and challenging, Malorie Blackman’s books plunged children’s literature into previously uncharted waters: her tragic reverse racism novel Noughts and Crosses challenged assumptions and declared her a writer like no other. Malorie’s stories do not all end happily, but there is always hope.
Filmed as Malorie prepares to release her long awaited autobiography, Just Sayin’: My Life in Words, this programme’s intimate, revealing and at times shocking film revisits the key moments in the life that made her a writer – many never shared publicly until now: from living in a homeless shelter as a teenager; to her life changing diagnosis aged 18; to her struggles to become a writer – documented in an unlikely treasure: an unassuming binder containing the 82 rejection letters she received before being published.
In the next episode, imagine … Sonia Boyce: Finding Her Voice, Yentob accompanies acclaimed artist Sonia Boyce as she prepares to make history as the first black woman to represent Great Britain at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Why does that matter? Because this historic, sprawling exhibition is widely seen as the most prestigious and influential showcase of contemporary art in the world. As art critic Waldemar Januszczak states, ‘There’s no bigger honour in art in Britain than to be the representative at the Venice Biennale. For better or worse you’re remembered for it.’ The pressure is on for Sonia Boyce to pull off the biggest exhibition of her career.
With behind the scenes access to the making of new art works and the installation process in Venice, we discover how Boyce’s Venice Pavilion has been inspired by a passion project she has been obsessed with for over 20 years. Called the ‘Devotional Collection’, it’s a massive archive of memorabilia relating to the contributions of black women in the British music industry and Boyce is bringing many of her collected names to Venice.
And the final instalment, imagine… Douglas Stuart, Douglas Stuart is at a critical point in his career as he emerges from the starlight of his triumphant debut novel, and winner of the Booker Prize, Shuggie Bain. imagine.. walks the streets of Glasgow’s East End and the East Village in New York as Douglas Stuart tries to unite two very different sides of his life through his writing.
Shuggie Bain centres around an alcoholic single mother and her queer son navigating life on a Glasgow sink estate. It is distilled through Douglas’s own troubled upbringing in poverty and addiction in 1980’s Glasgow. imagine…takes Stuart back to the old haunts in the novel: the Sighthill estate, the Barrowlands market and the Grand Ole Opry.
Alan Yentob retraces Stuart’s remarkable journey in New York where he was now able to be open about his sexuality, having faced isolation and homophobia growing up in Glasgow. However, despite his astonishing success in the high-end fashion world, he had not processed the memories of his youth. In 2009 he started writing the early drafts of Shuggie Bain as he travelled on the subway into work.
