The Bramston Bursary Foundation is thrilled to announce its upcoming online event:

In conversation with Alex Perry

This is a not to be missed opportunity to gain an insight into the mind of an award winning author and journalist.

Where do his ideas come from? What is his writing process? How are his stories being adapted for TV? How does he cope with the horror of witnessing some of the atrocities he investigates as a journalist? Oh, and what was it like being held in jail in Zimbabwe?

Alex Perry is a non-fiction writer. He is the author of The Good Mothers, The Rift, Falling Off The Edge, and Lifeblood, as well as several ebooks, and ghost-wrote Long Shot for Azad Cudi, a British-Kurdish sniper. His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Outside, Harper’s, The Guardian, TIME, Newsweek, Roads and Kingdoms, The Sunday Times magazine and others.

Alex’s journalism has won a number of awards and his investigation into Boko Haram’s use of beheadings was requested as evidence by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. At times, he has been recognised in other ways. In 2002, the Indian government tried to deport him when he questioned the state of the Prime Minister’s health. In 2007 Alex was held in jail in Zimbabwe for five days for working without accreditation before being convicted of being a “determined and resourceful journalist”.

Born in Philadelphia and raised in England, from 1999-2014, Perry lived and worked in Asia and Africa. He now lives in Hampshire, England.

Alex will be interviewed by a St Swithun's student studying English Literature, and there will also be time for a Q&A with our online audience.

This is a FREE event for all students (and for St Swithun's staff)

Due to content that may be discussed during the interview, we do not recommend this event for young children

Over 18s: You can choose your ticket price, £10, £20, £40 or £60 

Thank you

Alex Perry is kindly donating his time for free, so proceeds from ticket sales and additional donations will go directly to the Bramston Bursary Foundation

The link to join will be emailed to you prior to the event

Photo Credit: burlisonphotography.com

http://www.alex-perry.com/

About The Good Mothers

Founded more than 150 years ago by old shepherding families and orange farmers in the toe of southern Italy, the Calabrian Mafia is one of the richest and most ruthless organized crime syndicates in the world. Italian prosecutors say it runs 70% of the cocaine in Europe. It manages billion-dollar extortion rackets. It plunders the Italian state and the European Union. It brokers illegal arms deals to criminals, rebels and terrorists around the world, including ISIS, and has franchises from America to Australia, and from Cairo to Cape Town.

The Calabrians make so much money – an estimated $50-100 billion a year, equivalent to 3.5% of Italian GDP – that hiding it requires industrial-scale laundering. Those efforts ensure the Calabrians are in all our lives. We live in their buildings, work in their companies, shop in their stores, eat in their restaurants and elect political parties they fund. Most incredible of all: few people have ever heard of them. The ’Ndrangheta – an ancient Calabrese word, pronounced un-drung-get-a, meaning loyalty and courage – is a secret even to many Italians. Only in the last few years has the Italian state understood its scale.

The ’Ndrangheta’s power, as with all organised crime, depends upon silence – omertà – and violence. The ’Ndrangheta’s genius lies in how it hijacked the Italian family to enforce loyalty. The same 140 Calabrese families who founded the ’Ndrangheta in the 19th century make up most of its members today. You are either born in, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave, and you kill your own father, brother, sister or mother, before you betray The Family.

Underpinning this iron rule is violent chauvinism and a conviction among the men that women are chattels where property and honour converge. Girls are married off in arranged clan alliances as soon as they turn 13, and then largely confined to the home. Beatings are routine. A woman who is unfaithful – even to a dead husband – can expect her sons, brothers or father to kill her, before dissolving her body in acid to erase the family’s shame.

Yet in 2009, when one abused ’Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state’s evidence, a state prosecutor named Alessandra Cerreti confronted a tantalising possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s murderous bigotry may be its great flaw, and her most devastating weapon. In pursuit of this belief, Alessandra persuaded two more Mafia wives to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children. Their evidence brought down a billion-dollar crime family, precipitating a small avalanche of betrayals from other women that threatens the ’Ndrangheta’s entire global criminal empire.

The stakes could not have been higher. Alessandra was fighting to save a nation. The Mafiosi were fighting for their existence. Their women were fighting for their lives. Not all would survive.

NOMINATED FOR THE 2019 EDGAR ALLAN POE AWARD FOR BEST FACT CRIME

NAMED A CRIMEREADS BEST NONFICTION CRIME BOOK OF 2018

HOT OFF THE PRESS....The Good Mothers is soon to be made into a TV series by Disney+

‘THE GOOD MOTHERS’ ITALIAN “STAR ORIGINAL” ANNOUNCED

Ahead of the launch of the new general entertainment brand “Star” on Disney+ next week, Disney has announced that it has commissioned a new mafia series for Disney+ in Italy, which will be a brand new “Star Original” called ‘The Good Mothers’.

This new Italian series “The Good Mothers”, offers a unique twist on the crime genre: this is the mafia seen entirely from the women’s perspectives.  The series will consist of 6 episodes and was originally going to be made in English, but Disney decided it would be more authentic in Italian.

A Star Original for Disney+, the series is executive produced by Juliette Howell and Tessa Ross for House Productions (Brexit: The Uncivil War) and Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for Wildside, written by BAFTA Award-winning Stephen Butchard (Baghdad Central), and based on the gripping book by Foreign Press Association award-winning journalist Alex Perry.

The series follows the shocking true story of three women who were born into the most deadly and wealthy of the Italian mafia clans and how they worked with a courageous female prosecutor to bring it down. They must fight their own families for the right to survive and build a new future for their children.

https://whatsondisneyplus.com/the-good-mothers-italian-star-original-announced/

Awards and Distinctions:

2020

The Ed Cunningham Award, best magazine-style, long-form narrative feature in print or digital on an international story, Overseas Press Club of America. For The Last Days of John Allen Chau, Outside magazine.

“In this superb feat of compulsively readable storytelling, Alex Perry weaves a deeply humanising portrait of a young man with a deadly missionary zeal and illuminates the ongoing effects of missionary work, adventurism and the exoticism of the world’s remote peoples.”

Society of American Travel Writers, Travel News/Investigative Reporting, Third Place. For The Last Days of John Allen Chau, Outside magazine.

“Skilful writing and masterful story-telling capture the behind-the-scenes story of a young man’s fateful odyssey to convert a little-known island tribe to Christianity. The story is told in intricate detail … The writer’s own journey to the area created extraordinary and engaging journalism.”

2019

Nominated for a 2019 Edgar® Award for Best Fact Crime for The Good Mothers.

The Good Mothers named a CrimeReads best Nonfiction Crime Book of 2018.

2015

British Society of Magazine Editors Rising Star Awards, Best Print Writer, Highly Commended, for Clooney’s War and Inside the Hunt for Boko Haram, Newsweek.

Kurt Schork Memorial Awards in International Journalism, Freelance Journalist Covering International News, shortlisted for Clooney’s War, Inside the Hunt for Boko Haram and Once Upon a Jihad, Newsweek.

2010

Foreign Press Association, London, Sports Story of the Year, for Playing the Rebel Game (about the World Cup in South Africa), TIME magazine.

2008

Genesis Awards, Commendation, for Eden for Peaceful Apes (about bonobos in Congo), TIME magazine.

2004

South Asia Journalists Association, The Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Story on South Asia, Second Place, for Living on the Brink (about Nepal’s civil war), TIME magazine.

2002

The Joseph L. Galloway War Correspondents’ Award for Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi, TIME magazine.

American Society of Magazine Editors, National Magazine Awards, Reporting, Finalist for Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi, TIME magazine.

The Society of Publishers in Asia, Certificate of Excellence in Reporting, for Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi, TIME magazine.

The Henry R. Luce Awards, Special Citation, Reporting, for Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi, TIME magazine.

Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi was also included in the anthology, The Best American Magazine Writing, 2002.