Adelle Stripe

Adelle Stripe (born 1976)[1] is an English writer from Tadcaster, North Yorkshire.

Her debut novel, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, based on the life and work of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, was published by Fleet.[2] The Spectator said this literary portrayal mixed fiction and biography in the manner of Gordon Burn, and 'restores Dunbar to the place and time that made her — the north of England of the 1970s and 1980s.'[3] The novel was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize,[4] received the Society of Authors' K Blundell Trust Award for Fiction,[5] and was shortlisted for the Portico Prize, an award for "outstanding literature that best evokes the spirit of the north."[6]

In 2019 The Guardian featured the stage adaptation of Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile with Freedom Studios and screenwriter Lisa Holdsworth.[7] The play toured across theatres, working men's clubs and informal venues in Yorkshire and was positively reviewed in the national media. The Stage said the play was 'poignant and resonant … a relevant and emotive caution against the one-size-fits-all approach of the privileged theatre industry'.[8]

In 2019, Stripe announced a music journalism edition with Rough Trade Books, Sweating Tears with Fat White Family, featuring interviews with Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski of Fat White Family.[9]

Previously, Stripe was primarily a poet,[10] and was affiliated with the Offbeat generation. She published three poetry collections; Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid, Cigarettes in Bed and Dark Corners of the Land. In 2006, alongside Tony O'Neill and Ben Myers she formed possibly the first literary movement spawned via a social networking site, the Brutalists, who the BBC described as a 'group of young writers with a back-to-basics approach to poetry'.[11] The Humber Star, her poem based on the experiences of women in 19th century Hessle Road, was performed at John Grant's North Atlantic Flux, for Hull UK City of Culture 2017.[12]