SEED by Joanna Walsh

'Seed is Joanna Walsh's best book, and that's saying something.' Isabel Waidner, author of Sterling Karat Gold.

'Seed is a marvel. Each page Joanna Walsh writes shines with such vividness and depth, painting a distinct vision that compels the reader to gaze again, to gaze ever deeper.' Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat

In June 2021, No Alibis Press will publish Seed by celebrated writer and critic Joanna Walsh.

Seed's narrator is on the threshold of adulthood, living in an English valley in the late 1980s when life is overshadowed by fears of nuclear contagion, AIDS and CJD. Composed in narrative threads of poetic prose, Seed explores universal themes of restriction and desire, delving deep into the narrator's subjective consciousness and demonstrating the polyphonic discourse - fashion magazines, art, public health advice - and relationships that shape her becoming.

Joanna created the artwork for Seed by coding a piece of generative digital art, Thicket, which grows and spreads to give a unique visual result each time the program is run. You can try it yourself here:

Play here

'Thicket is spontaneous-looking generative artwork inspired by fractal natural forms, which I coded to create visuals for the book. I wanted to make a digital drawing that I couldn't entirely control, and that viewers could run to generate their own iteration of the work, subtly different every time so that no one who visits this website will ever see exactly the same version. The directions taken by the line on the screen are 'pseudo-random' (in standard coding there are no 'real' random numbers), allowing a degree of freedom within set parameters. The work generates messy, tangled lines which, like natural forms (and like the social constraints on Seed's narrator) appear to grow haphazardly, despite the underlying structures that control them.'

Read more about Seed and Joanna Walsh.

This project is supported by the National Lottery grant, awarded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.