In 2012, I was commissioned by Shire Hall Gallery, Stafford, to make new work inspired by their building for an exhibition. The Shire Hall Gallery (now closed) was a contemporary craft  exhibition venue within the historic Shire Hall court building completed in 1789. The wood panelled court rooms and holding cells survive along with the impressive entrance hall with plaster ceiling. 

I initially intended to make a piece very much based on the textures and shapes within the building itself, but a display of criminal mugshots with their hands on their chests captivated me. There was something very personal and emotive about the hands. In the end I had no choice but to work with these images as  my inspiration for the commission, and decided to focus on the images of women. The details of their clothing added even more personality to the photographs and led the way for me to make textile work about them.

I chose to use their hands as a repeating motif throughout the series of seven miniature quilts (a catch-all term for fine art textiles, not actually quilts). The idea of quilts worked for me as a reference to the lack of domestic comfort these women would have experience in prison. We normally associate quilts with safety and security. 

I used layered fabrics to represent layers of history and of stories within the building, within the archive and within the women’s lives and a muted colour palette inspired by the sepia photographs as well as the structure of the building in wood, stone and lead.

The series of seven miniature quilts were displayed in 2012-13 and later purchased for the museum collections of Staffordshire County Council. They were displayed outside the court rooms until the Shire Hall was closed to the public in July 2017 and will be redisplayed in Staffordshire Record Office in August 2017. 

I have continued to develop work around the Criminal Quilts theme and stories, still focussing on the visual imagery of the photographs and the motif of the hands but extending the size and scale of the work. A further small collection of miniature pieces made in 2013-14 were  displayed in New York and I created a series of larger pieces for a solo exhibition of my work at the National Centre for Craft & Design in 2015. One of the pieces from that series won the Fine Art Quilt Masters competition in 2016. 

Criminal Quilts continues into 2018 when I will be Artist in Residence in Staffordshire Record Office funded by Arts Council England and Staffordshire County Council. I will working on new Criminal Quilts and exploring the women’s stories in much more detail alongside archive volunteers and art students. 

This phase of Criminal Quilts will be shared through community workshops, new information displays, learning resources and exhibitions in 2018. My artist residency and project officially launches in Stafford at the Record Office on Friday 8th September 2017. 

Several of these pieces can be seen in exhibitions around the UK during August including the patchwork chair piece at Unit Twelve Gallery Staffordshire and the Criminal Quilts : Hanging piece at Minerva Arts Centre Llanidloes, mid Wales in Ruth’s exhibition Fragments. 
​
 Find out more at www.ruthsinger.com/criminalquilts

by
Francesca Dobson

During my attendance of the annual Captivating Criminality 4 conference, run by Fiona Peters and Joanne Parsons in the stunning grounds of Corsham Court, I was asked to attend a flash fiction workshop run by Hector Duarte, Jr. The workshop was scheduled to start at 6pm and as delegates filtered into the room, engulfed in chatter about the panels they had just previously attended, I took my seat and wondered what was in store.

Now, as an English Literature student, that very rarely delved into the unknown of creating my own fiction, I must admit I was slightly nervous when the word "participatory" flashed up on Hector's first lecture slide; particularly after spending a large proportion of the day in a state of awe at the incredibly well-respected delegates I was having the opportunity to listen to, as well as socialise with. However, as the doors were closed, seats taken and a silence subdued the scholarly chatter, there was a certain openness in the room which I didn’t expect to feel. There was a buzz of creative excitement as delegates retrieved note pads and pens from their bags and Hector, smiling, welcomed everybody to his workshop.

 To start Hector introduced us to some theory, some background on what fiction actually is and its functions. He presented us with the common idea that fiction primarily entertains; but, he added, simultaneously it allows a reader to enter an alternative world to the one that they inhabit every day, letting them experience and understand something that they otherwise wouldn’t. Subsequently, Hector went on to propose that Flash fiction literature also meets these framing criteria, however, as expected, it does it in a much quicker way - in a flash (if you will excuse the shocking pun).  Hector summarised this in a much more scholarly fashion, through the device of a metaphor in fact, which was as follows:

 "A novel is an entire house. A short story is one room. Flash fiction is looking inside the room through a keyhole."
 
Typically flash fiction is no more than 1000 words long, with a strong plot and tone, a clear sense of place, essential character development and most of all is entertaining but with purpose, opposed to having a sense of randomness. So why is flash fiction such an ever-growing genre Hector asked (rhetorically). His answer being that with the modern world demanding and absorbing information in such a quick fashion, for example through sharp headlines and short online articles, the binge watching of television series and even the cap of being having to express themselves through 250 characters in a Tweet, flash fiction thrives in its ability to facilitate readers with all the fulfilment as full-length fiction but in a smaller and quicker package.
 To make this flash fiction adhere to the crime fiction genre Hector presented us with a basic tenet, providing a template he had acquired from Gutter Books acquisition editor, Joe Clifford, who had said:
​
 "I/she/he wanted this; I/she/he did that; this is how it all turned to s**t"
 
From this Hector argued that in most crime fiction/noir are individuals who are hard-up and driven to do something outside of the law, on the fringes of society. In crime flash fiction happy endings are never ideal. Conclusively, Hector presented that this framework is a good template for anyone wanting to enter the world of writing flash fiction within the crime genre.

 With all this information received, noted and readily absorbed by the room, Hector now passed the floor over to the crowd of eager delegates. Abundances of creative stories emerged, many of which resulting in the room being filled with laughter and others eliciting a feeling of anticipation. Stories varied from hyperbolic protagonists dreading going into the office and therefore reeking a vengeful killing against their co-workers to scorned women seeking havoc on the world. Whatever the story the outcome was the same - bloody.
​
This flash fiction workshop provided a great insight into the thought process behind creating such short crime narratives, providing an extremely comfortable and fun environment in which to explore your own creative abilities. The session even left me, a keen literature reader who hasn’t delved into the creative writing world in years, eager to let my thoughts run wild with crazy ideas for short crime flash fictions of my own.  So, in a short (but not bloody) conclusion of the event, this session was a fabulously provided a calm, creative but insightful end to a brilliant first day at the Captivating Crime Conference 2017.

Captivating Criminality is a three-day experience and is notably one of the few academic conferences devoted entirely to crime fiction. It is currently in its fourth incarnation, Crime Fiction: Detection, Public and Private, Past and Present. Corsham Court is the perfect venue for the conference as it lends an air of the elegant country house so integral in cozy mysteries as well as a sense of contrast to the seedier vein of the hard-boiled genre. The conference has something for everyone and covers the crime novel from its embryonic form embedded within other genres to contemporary work. Whether one wants to explore the cozy mystery or the hard-boiled, there is a panel covering it.
 
This year’s keynotes were given by best-selling writer Sophie Hannah, Professor Gill Plain (St. Andrews), and Professor Mary Evans (London School of Economics). Each keynote highlighted a different aspect of public and private, past and present. Sophie Hannah was the first keynote speaker and offered a fascinating glimpse of the writer’s experience and the inner workings of the publishing industry. Hannah shared her personal story of what being chosen as the official continuation author for Agatha Christie was like. Hannah detailed her early attempts at the genre and the rejections from publishers who did not believe she had suffered enough. Hannah littered her speech with musings on her literary agent, who according to her, is a genius at his job while being completely unaware of social conventions. Hannah, perhaps unintentionally, highlighted the role chance plays in all writing and perhaps most important was Hannah’s definition of Agatha Christie as an attainable hero.

On the second day, Gill Plain’s keynote on masculinity in crime fiction in the 1950’ s addressed both the questions posed by the conference in that it explored the challenges of reintegrating masculinity into a post-war society. Plain’s discussion of James Bond in  Ian Fleming’s third novel Moonraker where Bond is given a domestic assignment offered a unique look at a Bond filing paperwork rather than being a masculine action figure.
 
On the third day, Mary Evans summed up the conference in a captivating exploration of loneliness and the loner in crime fiction. Evans referenced the Clinton campaign and the perception of loners and people in power. Evans did not fully explore the gendered aspect of the loner highlighted by her reference to the Clinton campaign, but she did illuminate the question of what social constructions placed on the figure of the loner. Evans further questioned what crime fiction is repairing in the social network and what function restorative justice has.
 
The conference began with the eternal debate over the generic boundaries of crime fiction with Ruth Heholt (Falmouth University) proposing a female progenitor for the detective novel in Catherine Crowe’s first novel Susan Hopley: The Adventures of a Maid Servant. The Q and A session highlighted the divide within the field on the boundaries of detective fiction and the limitations of beginning the genre with Poe’s Dupin mysteries. The definition of the boundaries of crime fiction will doubtless continue to be a contentious issue in further work on crime fiction. The first day was further enlivened by the presentation of the most politically incorrect paper of the conference by Kirsten T. Saxton (Mills College)  titled ‘Pussybitesback: A Prehistory of Female Revenge Fiction.’ Saxton made a case for psychological satisfaction in the awareness of fictionality and the use of absurd excesses in fantastical murder plots.
 
Throughout the conference, the question of Americanization in crime fiction was an issue. This Americanization was directly addressed in a panel called Red, White, and Blue: American Influences comprised of Stewart King (Monash University),  Jacqui Miller (Liverpool Hope University), and Tom O’Brien (University of Lincoln). Stewart King gave an inspiring paper on reading crime fiction as world literature and O’Brien presented a paper on American exceptionalism and racial binaries in Patricia Highsmith’s collection of short stories set in Mexico. Miller contributed to the discussion with a comparative evaluation of the American and British film adaptations of Ted Lewis’ novel Jack’s Return Home. In the Q and A most questions were based on a regional understanding of the crime genre with particular consideration being given to the deployment of stereotypes in Patricia Highsmith’s work. The discussion of the Mexican border being of particular political interest. The Americanization of crime fiction was on display throughout the conference with other papers covering American stereotyping, such as Veronica Watson (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) on Black Crime Fiction in the age of Black Lives Matter, further highlighting the role current political and social concerns play in the reception of crime fiction. Further evidence of Americanization was the appropriation of American slogans found in Eric Sandberg’s (University of Oulu) paper ‘Make Britain Great Again: Nostalgia in Derek Raymond’s Factory Novels’  where there is a clear association between nostalgia and the easily recognizable re-wording of Trump’s 2016 slogan.
 
The panel on Place and Space with Jennifer Schnabel (Ohio State University), Annemarie Lopez (Macquarie University), and Eoin McCarney (Dublin City University) were key in contextualizing the roles place and space play within the genre. Of particular note was  Lopez’s  survey of the Psychogeography of cities  and McCarney’s illuminating on investigation of environmental borderlands. McCarney discussed the role of the bog in Irish crime fiction and the desert in Mexican fiction as places where history is preserved, in the case of the bog, or erased in the case of the desert.
 
The conference, perhaps in continuation of the question of loneliness and the loner posed by Mary Evans, will return in its fifth reincarnation as Insiders and Outsiders which promises to be a further exploration of the role all boundaries, be they material or immaterial, play in the construction of crime fiction.
 
Anna Kirsch is currently completing her English Studies MA at Durham University. Her thesis is on Environmental Ethics and Morality in Carl Hiaasen’s Crime Fiction, and she presented a paper on public justice and private revenge in Hiaasen’s fiction at Captivating Criminality 4. Her research interests include Crime Fiction, Satire, and American Studies. Her Twitter is @kucerakirsch.