THE NOISY VALLEY

THE NOISY VALLEY

• Publishing Company:

  FIRST GRAPHIC NOVEL

• Imprint:

  AGENTED BY PEARLMAN & LACEY

• Format:

  ONE SHOT

• Creator(s):

  MYFANWY TRISTRAM (AUTHOR)

• Number of Pages:

  160

• Publication Date:

  Unpublished

• Age:

  ADULT, YOUNG ADULT

• Fiction/Non-Fiction

  NON-FICTION

• Key words:

  SOCIAL COMMENTARY, RESISTANCE, RESILIANCE, POLITICS,

• Summary:

  The Noisy Valley is graphic journalism at its best, documenting stories of protest from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. It’s a response to current-day erosion of people’s rights to protest — and it’s also a fascinating set of stories from people who wouldn’t take things lying down.
  
  The Rhondda Valley is a beautiful landscape of high green mountains and panoramic views, but it’s also one of most deprived areas of the country, with few prospects for those growing up in the region. In 2022, when Myfanwy Tristram was invited to exhibit images of demonstrators at the Workers Gallery in Wales, she asked local people to share their stories of protest – but had no idea what a rich seam this would prove. The Valleys were at the heart of the miners’ strikes back in the 1980s, when 20,000 miners were threatened with the loss of their jobs, but Myf also heard about protests past and present, about closing down a landfill site leaching poison into the local streams, locking oneself to a gate when giant diggers rolled in to tear up ancient meadowland, and how to become a protest photographer – an interview with the veteran Magnum photographer David Hurn, who recorded the Aldermaston Ban-the-Bomb Marches back in the Sixties. There is also the schoolgirl who refused to accept a decision about her options and staged a one-person sit-in, and a secretary in the courthouse who rebelled from being seen as ‘just’ a typist. As one of Myfanwy Tristram’s interviewees says: ‘It’s about what ordinary people do, because what we do… is quite extraordinary.’
  
  The final chapter looks at the current laws affecting protest, and places these stories of uprisings in a remote valley in Wales into the UK’s political, economic and social history, documenting people’s rights to change it.
  
  Publishing rights for Satin and Tat are represented by Corinne Pearlman at Pearlman & Lacey.