Isobel Dixon joined Blake Friedmann in 1995 and represents writers from around the world, including a number of prominent South African authors. Her interests are wide-ranging and her clients’ work includes literary fiction, young adult fiction, crime and thrillers, memoir, popular culture, biography, history and current affairs.
Isobel was born and educated in South Africa, and in Edinburgh where she completed Masters degrees in English Literature and Applied Linguistics. She has translated novels from the Afrikaans and her poetry collection WEATHER EYE (Carapace, 2001), won the Sanlam Prize and the Olive Schreiner Award in South Africa. Her new collection A FOLD IN THE MAP is published by Salt in the UK and Jacana in South Africa (November 2007).
She is a Frankfurt Book Fair Fellow and often speaks on panels at literary events and to writers’ groups.
Clients include
Nathalie Abi-Ezzi, Nick Afka, Estate of Tatamkhulu Afrika, Mary Akers, Sandy Balfour, Simon Barraclough, Helen Bettinson, Andrew Bienkowski, Troy Blacklaws, Estate of Lily Buckle, Edward Carey, George Makana Clark, Imraan Coovadia, Achmat Dangor, Andrew Dilger, Diana Duff, Estate of K. Sello Duiker, David Erdal, Michael Faulkner, Gus Ferguson, Essie Fox, David Gilman, Lyndall Gordon, Chris Harrison, Jan Harrow, Etienne van Heerden, Michiel Heyns, Denis Hirson, Billy Hopkins, David Hume, Kimberly Johnson, Manu Joseph, Kapka Kassabova, Nina Killham, Azmeena Ladha, Charles Lambert, Carol Lefevre, Estate of Edward Beauclerk Maurice, Zakes Mda, Deon Meyer, Nthikeng Mohlele, Christopher Nicholson, Marlene van Niekerk, Gregory Norminton, Margie Orford, Tony Park, Marguerite Poland, Monique Roffey, Zina Rohan, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Sujit Saraf, Eleanor Stanford, Mike van Graan, Ivan Vladislavic, Marita van der Vyver, Anne Watts, Jane Wilson-Howarth
Place your bids in the comments box below and be sure to remember to leave your contact details and the amount of your bid!
I have thoroughly enjoyed the battle going on over here between Nicola and Kim!
If the agents take pity on both Nicola and Kim, and are prepared to read BOTH of thier manuscripts, then I will top up their combined bid by another £10 – sorry it isn’t more but the baby needs feeding.
Gem
Well, midnight is fast approaching. Before I go off to work (yes, I have a lowly job until I can earn money the way I really want to), I would like to add £30.00 to your bid, Michelle – which will take the total of your bid to £320.00.
I hope that this will help ensure that you win the bid.
Good luck.
Nicola.
Michelle – it has been an absoulte pleasure. I wish you every success and hope to see your book in print. This is, unfortunately, where I have to get off the merry-go-round. I cannot match your bid. I hope you get it and that no one else comes along at the 11th hour.
Best regards (I’ll be looking out for your name at Waterstone’s!)
Nicola. xx
Okay, its close to the cut off line, no more joking about, although it’s been a delight Nicola. – If I’m unsuccesful I hope you get the appraisal.
I have lived and breathed this novel – Recurrence, for the last year but do not have the courage to send it to an agent. I have a pool of readers who have invested into it and really believe it has worth. Please, Isobel, consider my bid for £290. This could be the beginning of my new life. I NEED this opportunity. Fingers, toes and other bits crossed and failing that, Good Luck everyone! A desperado writer, Miss Lindsay.
Michelle – there is a new contender and I’m panicking. As I have been living under a shrub, I have no cushions to check behind or a couch to squeeze my hand under. However, I did manage to pick pocket a policeman just before he chased me from my shrub with a pellet gun.
I now bid £225.00
I don’t suppose you would take the offerings of my firstborn, would you?
As a writer money is something we’re always short of, but I can cook, clean and be a general dogsbody for you. You can’t put a price on that!
I’ll come back and bid after I’ve robbed the children’s piggybanks, my husband’s wallet and searched under the lounge cushions…
You realise we are doomed, there’s a guy on the other auction site hammering us. Even the elves feel despair about the situation. Our Python quest seems to be fated!
Ah, it seems it’s rustic elves I should have been looking for and not dodgy Italians. Well – there’s nothing to be done for it, except to crawl back under this horrible shrub and hope that by the morning my luck has changed….like maybe my rival has dropped the cactus from her mouth and perhaps sat on it.
Michelle, when I said go in for the kill, I didn’t mean kill ME! (Have no idea what I really meant, but I know it wasn’t that!)
The quick sand really took a hold of me and dragged me down to the centre of the earth, it’s rather hot down here, but the up side is, rustic elves (natives of centre earth) have offered me sterling, how they got a hold of the stuff I’ll never know. Of course it’s a currency, I have to dance naked every twenty minutes with a cactus in my mouth but it’s a small price to pay – therefore I bid £220.
My rival is conspicious by her absence. I suspect she is trawling the underworld looking for a new loan shark – probably one connected to the Mafia. I would do the same, however I have not spotted any Italian-looking criminals where I live. So I will opt to buy a lottery ticket and drop to my knees and pray for a win!
In the meantime I continue to pick up pennies off the pavement…
New bid: £217.11
Oh, my shattered nerves! Michelle – we’ll just have to go for the kill!
And as luck would have it – I just discovered a fiver under this wet shrub.
New bid is now therefore: £210.67
Homeless and hungry. Not to mention wet & worn out!
Nicola – A Majour Caveat: On Carole Blake’s auction page somebody has went as high as £275. This could hinder our Monty Python style auction battle. What should we do?
With the money still wedged in my mouth , trapped in the quick sand I began to feel defeated but then a magical intervention with a golden sparrow changed everything. The golden bird aptly named, Lucky, dropped several coins upon me and it squawked in a shrill tone, “use it to improve your dire existence,” I knew exactly what the bird needed me to do, it needed me to bid £210 to secure my novel into the safe hands of Miss Isobel Dixon. I’m alone in the ditch but feel comforted by the compassion the sparrow expressed.
I have crawled out of my muddy shrub and am standing on the corner looking like an overgrown polony in a wet t-shirt competition, begging money off strangers. Some are friendly, while others toss their loose coins at me and laugh while I scurry about trying to collect them out the gutter (where I am bound to end up soon…). I count my collection of coins & add them to the last few wet notes I have……..
£205.67 is my latest bid.
Oh dear, the rain had flooded my hole and the mud has turned to clay, I’m afraid I’m trapped like quick sand, but with a wonderful twist of fate I have £201 wedged in my mouth which I’m using like oars on a dingy to try and escape my sinking situation. By the way none of this stuff is symbolic or a metaphor, I am actually living through these diabolical situations. If only Ms Kim would take pity on me.
And…I’m afraid, I can’t shout help or the cash will drop out of my mouth, what a pickle I’m in!
I am under a wet shrub in the park, lying in the mud, freezing, trying to ignore the wails of Mr Husband as to where the children are. I suspect this is going to be a long night. I am taking out virtually all I have left…£200 – rain soaked.
Perhaps dear Michelle will take pity on me and surrender…
My shed has blew down, I have now dug a hole and the chicken has fled. I have only my novel, draft 5, for shelter from the rain in the coldest bleakest backdrop of Gateshead. £195 is my new desperate bid. I know I am dealing with my equal here in Nicola but please spare me, I’m drowning in mud.
A cold, weathered, pathetic writer, Michelle.
Michelle still has a roof over her head with a chicken for company! The landlord kicked me out (into the rain) and the big policeman took my begging children away….their tear stained faces will be forever etched into my memory peering out the back of the van… How will I explain this all to Mr Husband?
New bid: £189.00.
Dear Isobel
I am stretching my debts to £185.00. I now live in a shed with an irratated chicken. I guess I really want my novel reviewed, and anyway, chicken food is kinda tasty once your taste buds go into shock.
Michelle Lindsay
The landlord is at the door with a big policeman, the children are out on the street begging……
New bid £180.00……make that £180.01
Dear Isobel
I’m at the £160 point! No food, landlord wants my blood and the loan sharks are approaching to ambush.
Michelle – aka, women on a literary mission.
Now we’re going without food and dodging the landlord!
New bid £158.00
*lying under bed hiding from landlord, listening to my rumbling stomach*
Hi Isobel
I am willing to stretch to £155, my landlord can simply go with out. The novel comes first!
Michelle Lindsay, eager and desperate for guidance.
Ok, I have negotiated with the children. They are prepared to skip a few meals – thus I can increase my bid to £153.00.
Sorry, forgot to add my bid: £100
The breaking of boundaries, escaping traditions, a lurid discovery, a true possibility.
Bidding as a potential gift for Him Indoors: £150
07834363102
Love that Marita vd Vyver is a client.
My bid goes in at £85.00 (another broke aspiring writer here! working on a book about growing up in SA)
Contact: 01738636051
Regards,
Nicola.
Hello Isobel
I’m completely broke and m/s is nowhere near complete, but what the hell. I’ll offer £60 for the learning opportunity of a lifetime. I write mainly psychological thriller / drama (good start eh, let’s mix up those genres a bit more why don’t we?) but also young adult and children’s novels. 13 Lies is begging for some help – so I hope beyond hope that everyone else is feeling even more penniless than I am.
Contact: 01440 706768 alifolwell@btopenworld.com
Kind regards
Alison
Hi Isobel
I am a drama tutor based in the northeast and I have written my debut, Recurrence. I noticed you are interested in young adult writing and I think Recurrence would benefit immensely by a proffesional review. I bid £50! Contact: 0191 4173833 / 07748370855.
I am new to the writing world and 100% addicted, I really hope you can help me improve as an author.
Thank you
Best Wishes
Michelle Lindsay
Returning to say that I bid 25 pounds.
Hi Isobel! I don’t know if I’m being enthusiastically early, but here’s my bid. I’m bidding for you as you represent South African writers.
My contact details are:
+49-6203-956837/+49-170-483-7039
charlotte.otter@t-online.de
Best, Charlotte