Celebration of female writers will have alternative wedding chapel where women can ‘marry’ themselves
The award-winning novelist Marian Keyes has been announced as one of the headline acts at a feminist literary festival where women are being encouraged to “marry” themselves.
The Primadonna festival, which focuses on female writers to redress the gender inequality in publishing, is to follow the lead of the actor Emma Watson in celebrating self-partnering.
Continue reading...Festival celebrating female writers offers prize draw for winner to celebrate ‘self-partnering’ in style
Award-winning novelist Marian Keyes will be first in line to “marry herself” at a literary festival promoting work by women.
The Primadonna festival, which focuses on female writers to redress the gender inequality in publishing, is to follow the lead of the actor Emma Watson in celebrating self-partnering.
Continue reading...Bookselling chain’s chief executive James Daunt says he fears ‘going bust’ and that paying entry-level staff more would betray ‘basic principle’ the business runs on
Waterstones chief executive James Daunt has hit back at campaigners who continue to call on the bookselling chain to pay all staff a living wage, saying that increasing wages for entry-level staff would be “to betray the basic principle by which we’ve been running the business”.
On Wednesday, the retailer announced booksellers’ pay would be increased in April by 6.2% across the board, almost a year after a petition signed by 9,300 writers and booksellers called on the chain to pay an hourly wage of £9, or £10.55 in Greater London. This is the amount the Living Wage Foundation (LWF) calculates is enough to live on across the UK.
Related: Waterstones living-wage protesters leave bookselling
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg effect behind sales boom in books on everything from plastic waste to endangered wildlife
I’m reading one of a small forest’s-worth of beautiful new picture books about the environment with my eight-year-old twins. The Sea, by Miranda Krestovnikoff and Jill Calder, takes us into mangrove swamps and kelp forests and coral reefs. We learn about goblin sharks and vampire squids and a poisonous creature called a nudibranch. Then we reach the final chapter on ocean plastics. When we learn that by 2050 there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish, Esme bursts into inconsolable tears.
Continue reading...Nine of 13 nominated titles for this year’s £50,000 award for the best translated fiction come from indie publishers
Some of the smallest publishers in the UK are doing the heaviest lifting seeking out the best translated fiction, with the longlist for this year’s International Booker prize dominated by tiny presses at the expense of their wealthier rivals.
The £50,000 award, which is split evenly between writer and translator, is for the finest translated fiction from around the world, with previous winners including Korean bestseller Han Kang and Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk. Settings for the 13 novels up for this year’s prize range from Iran – in Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, narrated by the ghost of a 13-year-old girl fleeing her home after the 1979 revolution – to South Africa, in Willem Anker’s Red Dog, described by judges as “a novel of serpentine, swashbuckling sentences that capture the mounting cruelty of the colonial project”.
Related: Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq review – a vision of degraded masculinity
Continue reading...Poet laureate lays out ideas to give the country an official home for the practice, in line with other ‘national art forms’
The art world has the National Gallery; drama has the National Theatre. Now poet laureate Simon Armitage is putting plans in motion for a National Poetry Centre “headquarters” in Leeds.
The National Poetry Centre is intended to be a public space with an extensive poetry collection, several rehearsal and performances spaces, and a cafe, where literary events can be held, writers can exchange ideas, and visiting authors can stay. It is backed by Leeds city council, the University of Leeds and Leeds 2023 – a year-long celebration of arts and culture in the city.
Continue reading...American author of more than 80 books forged path as prolific commercial writer who sometimes published four books a year
Clive Cussler, the bestselling American author of adventure novels including Sahara and maritime thrillers starring his hero Dirk Pitt, has died aged 88.
The author and co-author of more than 80 books, Cussler sold more than 100m books around the world and was published in more than 40 languages. He made the New York Times bestseller list 17 times in a row. His fortune was estimated to be $120m (£92.8m).
It is with a heavy heart that I share the sad news that my husband Clive passed away Mon. It has been a privilege to share in his life. I want to thank you his fans & friends for all the support. He was the kindest most gentle man I ever met.I know, his adventures will continue. pic.twitter.com/2fQZcQsuMd
Continue reading...Targaryendraco wiedenrothi has been renamed after House of Targaryen in George RR Martin’s fantasy saga
George RR Martin is celebrating after a palaeontologist, who named a new genus of pterosaur after the dragons of House Targaryen, agreed with him that dragons should have two, rather than four, legs.
The fossilised bones of Targaryendraco wiedenrothi, which lived 130m years ago, were discovered by Kurt Wiedenroth in 1984 in northern Germany. The specimen was originally classified within the Ornithocheirus group of pterosaurs, as Ornithocheirus wiedenrothi, but the toothy pterosaur has now been reassigned to the new genus Targaryendraco. Six other already known pterosaurs were also found to be closely related to the group, which features pterosaurs with wingspans between 10 and 26 feet, and narrow snouts.
Continue reading...Eight books in contention for £30,000 award that has never been won by a woman include Zadie Smith’s story collection Grand Union and poet Fiona Benson’s Vertigo & Ghost
Zadie Smith and Forward prize winner Fiona Benson are among six female authors shortlisted for this year’s Rathbones Folio prize, which has not yet been won by a woman.
Set up in the wake of controversy around the 2011 Booker prize, which saw chair of judges Stella Rimington praising “readability” and books that “zip along”, to the dismay of parts of the literary establishment, the £30,000 prize rewards “the best work of literature of the year, regardless of form”. It has been won in the past by books including Raymond Antrobus’s poetry collection The Perseverance and Richard Lloyd Parry’s look at the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 disaster Ghosts of the Tsunami.
Continue reading...Conversation with Friends will follow Rooney’s Normal People that will air in April
The BBC has commissioned a 12-part series based on Sally Rooney’s hit debut novel Conversations with Friends in the hope that fans of the young Irish author will bring in younger audiences.
The BBC is to show its forthcoming adaptation of Rooney’s second novel, Normal People, suggesting the corporation is already banking on the series being a hit when it is released by the online-only BBC Three service in April.
Continue reading...Author of dystopian series hopes TV adaptation will open up more nuanced debate on race in UK
The bestselling author and former children’s laureate, Malorie Blackman, has said she hopes the forthcoming BBC adaptation of her critically acclaimed series Noughts and Crosses will open up a more nuanced debate on race in the UK.
With the subject permeating the critically acclaimed dystopian fiction series, Blackman, 58, told Radio Times the TV adaptation was being released at a time when it could make a bigger impact than when it was first announced four years ago.
Continue reading...Stephen Fry, Noam Chomsky and more than 40 NGOs say the country’s support for the event is at odds with its record on human rights
As bestselling authors from Jung Chang to Bernardine Evaristo prepare to gather in Abu Dhabi for the first Hay festival in the United Arab Emirates, leading figures have spoken out against the country’s compromised free speech. Stephen Fry - the festival’s president – has joined more than 40 public figures and organisations castigating its government for “promoting a platform for freedom of expression, while keeping behind bars Emirati citizens and residents who shared their own views and opinions”.
An open letter signed by Fry, Noam Chomsky, and a coalition of more than 40 NGOs including Amnesty and PEN International, is calling on the UAE to use the launch of the festival’s Abu Dhabi branch – which opens on Tuesday – to “demonstrate their respect for the right to freedom of expression by freeing all human rights defenders imprisoned for expressing themselves peacefully online”.
Continue reading...Kurdish Iranian writer says the film will bring more attention to Australia’s brutal immigration detention regime
Behrouz Boochani’s award-winning debut book, No Friend But The Mountains, will be made into a feature film with production to begin in Australia in mid-2021.
The Kurdish Iranian writer and journalist, who is currently living in New Zealand after six years in immigration detention, said the film adaptation would bring more international attention to the truth behind Australia’s brutal immigration detention regime.
Related: Behrouz Boochani, brutalised but not beaten by Manus, says simply: 'I did my best'
Continue reading...If William Shakespeare wrote about his son’s death at all, he concealed it in the lines of his late sonnets and plays that reveal a depth of understanding about grief. Now the latest in a run of modern works to be inspired by the sad legacy of this short life is being heralded as one of the most eagerly awaited books of the spring.
The acclaimed author Maggie O’Farrell’s first historical novel, Hamnet, tackles the mystery surrounding the fate of Hamnet Shakespeare, the playwright’s only son. It follows the critical success of the 2018 film All Is True, which starred Kenneth Branagh as the Bard and Judi Dench as his wife, Anne Hathaway, and of Bush Moukarzel’s short play for a solo child actor, Hamnet, which premiered in Dublin two years ago.
Continue reading...John Bolton is “a traitor” and his book should not be published before the election in November, Donald Trump reportedly told aides and media figures.
The president’s views on news of a book deal for Marie Yovanovitch, another key figure in the Ukraine scandal which led to Trump’s impeachment, were not immediately clear.
Related: Rod Blagojevich's 'political prisoner' claim is 'bullshit', says Anderson Cooper
Related: Watergate reporter Bob Woodward writing follow-up to Trump book Fear
Continue reading...The Da Vinci Code writer to publish his first volume for children, Wild Symphony, accompanied by his own orchestral work
Just like his hero Robert Langdon, who combines an eidetic memory with an uncanny knack for solving mysteries, incredible swimming skills and the ability to look good in Harris tweed, it turns out Dan Brown has has a similar range to his talents: novelist, composer and now picture book author.
The Da Vinci Code author is set to publish his first picture book, Wild Symphony, on 1 September – to be accompanied by a classical music album, his first official music release since his writing career began. Brown has a background in music, and before he published The Da Vinci Code had released a handful of albums, which included songs such as Sweet Pleasure in Pain, and a ballad about phone sex, 076-LOVE.
Continue reading...New British Library site ranges from medieval book Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke to manuscripts by Lewis Carroll and Jacqueline Wilson
From Horrid Henry to Just William, naughty children are not difficult to find in children’s books today. But bad behaviour isn’t confined to recent decades – a manuscript from 1480, which has been digitised for the first time by the British Library, gives an insight into the antics of medieval children, as it exhorts them to “pyke notte thyne errys nothyr thy nostrellys” – don’t pick your ears or your nostrils - and to “spette not ovyr thy tabylle”.
Continue reading...From a modern Moby-Dick to a stepsister’s take on Cinderella, the UK’s top children’s book prize highlights stories of ‘hope, discovery and understanding’
From a feminist retelling of Moby-Dick to a fresh look at Cinderella from the perspective of her stepsister, the longlist for the UK’s top children’s book prize, the Carnegie Medal, is packed with reimaginings of classic stories.
Established in 1936, the Carnegie has been won by some of the UK’s best-loved children’s authors, including Noel Streatfeild and CS Lewis. The 20 books in the running this year range from Kit de Waal’s first young adult novel, Becoming Dinah – a reimagining of Moby-Dick in which a teenage girl sets off on a trip in a camper van with a grumpy one-legged man – to Jennifer Donnelly’s take on Cinderella, Stepsister, and Sharon Dogar’s Monsters, about the creation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Continue reading...Landmark western author’s most famous novel gave John Wayne an Oscar-winning role, and inspired the Coen brothers
Charles Portis, the reclusive author of the western True Grit, in which a 14-year-old girl sets out to avenge her father’s murder, has died at the age of 86.
Portis’s brother Jonathan told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the writer died on Monday in a hospice in Little Rock, Arkansas. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Continue reading...Prompted by a reader’s offer, donations to two bookshops have already funded hundreds of giveaways of Matt Haig’s book Reasons to Stay Alive
An independent bookseller has been deluged with thousands of requests after offering to send anyone who feels they need one a copy of Matt Haig’s memoir about depression, Reasons to Stay Alive, in an initiative the author called “such a positive thing on what was a pretty bleak weekend”.
Simon Key, who runs online retailer the Big Green Bookshop, was contacted by a reader, Emma, offering to buy a couple of copies of Haig’s book for people in the wake of TV presenter Caroline Flack’s death. Haig’s book details his own descent into depression, and his climb back out of it.
Continue reading...£700,000 could be diverted from Yorkshire council’s wellbeing budget to offset library cuts
The library at Thebes was said to have the inscription “Medicine for the soul” above its doors – a notion Bradford council is set to put to the test with plans to offset major library cuts with funds from its health and wellbeing budget.
The West Yorkshire council is just one of the local authorities up and down the country which has dealt with shrinking reserves by closing hundreds of libraries. Last year, it proposed chopping £2 million from its libraries spending over two years, a funding reduction of two-thirds. The biggest cut of £1.05m was due to hit at the start of this coming financial year, until the council came up with what could be described as a novel idea.
The social interaction libraries provide is vital, especially for isolated people … We are remodelling how they work to meet the needs of the health agenda
If we didn't have libraries, I think people would be very miserable
Continue reading...AE Hotchner, a well-traveled author and playwright who wrote a famous memoir of Ernest Hemingway, had business adventures with Paul Newman and saw Steven Soderbergh film his book about his Depression-era childhood, died on Saturday. He was 102.
Related: Hemingway In Love: His Own Story by AE Hotchner – memories of a literary giant
Continue reading...Two men who broke into London bookshop Gay’s the Word were caught by police after raid became a drinking session
Things went flat for two burglars who broke into London bookshop Gay’s the Word, after police caught them quaffing prosecco in the shop’s basement.
Front and back windows at Gay’s the Word, which became the UK’s first gay bookshop when it was opened in 1979 and which featured in the film Pride, were smashed last Sunday. But after ransacking the shop and drinking a bottle of tequila left on the premises after a member of staff’s birthday, the burglars were caught by police in the store’s kitchen drinking prosecco. They were subsequently sentenced: one man was jailed for six months; the second given 16 weeks, suspended for 12 months.
Continue reading...Royal Ballet reveals adaptation of Atwood’s trilogy of dystopian novels Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam
The British choreographer Wayne McGregor is to stage an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy of dystopian novels Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam in a major international collaboration between the Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.
With the palindromic title MaddAddam, the three–act ballet will have its premiere in Toronto this November and reach London in 2022. It features a specially commissioned score from Max Richter and reunites the creative collaborators from McGregor’s acclaimed 2015 production Woolf Works, which brought together three novels by Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves.
Continue reading...Novelists rub shoulders with presidents, chefs, comedians and thriller megastars on longlist to define the title with the biggest impact on the book world
It could be almost the setup for a joke, but a former president, a Booker winner and an erotic fiction superstar have walked on to the British Book awards’ longlist, and one of them could be crowned the best writer of the past three decades.
Barack Obama, Hilary Mantel and EL James are three of the bestselling writers on an eclectic list drawn up to celebrate the awards’ 30th anniversary.
A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle (Penguin) | 1990
Delia Smith’s Christmas (BBC Books) | 1991
Wild Swans, Jung Chang (William Collins) | 1992
The Art Book (Phaidon) | 1995
Longitude, Dava Sobel (Fourth Estate) | 1997
Northern Lights, Philip Pullman (Scholastic) | 1997
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling (Bloomsbury) | 1998
Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (Picador) | 1998
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières (Vintage) | 1998
The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson and Nick Sharratt (Doubleday) | 2000
White Teeth, Zadie Smith (Penguin) | 2001
Sahara, Michael Palin (Weidenfeld Nicholson) | 2003
Brick Lane, Monica Ali (Transworld) | 2004
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon (David Fickling) | 2004
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Picador) | 2004
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (Transworld) | 2005
The Gruffalo’s Child, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler (Macmillan) | 2005
The Sound of Laughter, Peter Kay (Century) | 2007
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini (Bloomsbury) | 2008
Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown) | 2009
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (Quercus) | 2009
Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama (Canongate) | 2009
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate) | 2010
One Day, David Nicholls (Hodder) | 2010
How to Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran (Ebury) | 2011
Fifty Shades of Grey, EL James (Cornerstone) | 2012
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman (HarperFiction) | 2018
Normal People, Sally Rooney (Faber) | 2019
The Lost Words, Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane (Hamish Hamilton) | 2018
5 Ingredients, Jamie Oliver (Michael Joseph) | 2018
Continue reading...Colin Kaepernick has announced he will release a memoir later this year through his own publishing house.
The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback has had a huge impact on the debate around race, police violence and politics in sports since he knelt for the national anthem in protest at social injustice in 2016. However, he has made relatively few public statements since and he suggested the book may explain his actions more fully.
We are proud to announce the first release on #KaepernickPublishing will be @Kaepernick7 's memoir. The story tells of the experiences that led to the act of protest that has inspired the world. Available thru @audible_com and print/ebook in 2020. #PressRelease pic.twitter.com/U2hkGCPhT5
Related: Colin Kaepernick is the black Grinch for those who dream of a white America
Continue reading...The author argues the debate around Jeanine Cummins’ controversial novel shows how people are threatened for ‘daring to have opinions’
As writers and critics reveal the death threats they’ve received in the wake of the uproar surrounding Jeanine Cummins’ novel, American Dirt, Roxane Gay has called for people to “realise what real censorship looks like”.
Authors began sharing the threats to their life following the cancellation of Cummins’ tour for her controversial novel American Dirt, over concerns for her safety. The novel has been widely criticised for its stereotypical portrayals of Mexico and Mexicans, with the Chicana writer Myriam Gurba one of the first to condemn Cummins for her “overly ripe Mexican stereotypes”, and for her prose “taint[ed]” by the “white gaze”.
Continue reading...An autobiographical novel, Inside Story, will chronicle the writer’s romantic affairs, the death of Hitchens – his closest friend – and the 9/11 attacks
Martin Amis has written his “most intimate and epic work”, an autobiographical novel that will draw on the death of his closest friend, the polemical writer Christopher Hitchens.
Inside Story, published in September, is “the unseen portrait of Martin Amis’s extraordinary life”, according to his publisher Jonathan Cape. Amis writes about the “vibrant characters who have helped define” him, including Hitchens, who had cancer and died in Houston in 2011. Amis moved to the US partly to be near him.
Related: Martin Amis credits stepmother and Jane Austen for literary success
Continue reading...French comic-book author behind the character Agrippine covered gender and sexuality with a mordant humour
Claire Bretécher, one of the most celebrated French cartoonists of recent decades and the first woman to achieve significant prominence in the genre in France, has died aged 79.
Bretécher rose to fame in the 1970s with the comic-book series Les Frustres, (The Frustrated Ones) which tackled issues of gender and sexuality with a mordant and deadpan humour.
We lost a great cartoonist today. A women's rights activist, the one who had innovated in terms of the representation of women in comics. And whose comics made me laugh so much. R I P #clairebretecher pic.twitter.com/34ILfKiRS1
Continue reading...The large prize, worth CAD$150,000, is ‘a statement of belief in the brilliance of women’s writing’ in the US and Canada
The late Canadian author Carol Shields wanted to “writ[e] away the invisibility of women’s lives”. Now a major new literary award is being set up in her name: worth CAD$150,000, the Carol Shields prize for fiction will be a North American equivalent to the UK’s Women’s prize, celebrating “excellence in fiction” by female and non-binary writers.
Launching in 2022, the prize – the first annual award for women’s fiction in North America – is supported by names including Margaret Atwood, Jennifer Egan and Scott Turow. It is intended to put “the work of women writers in the spotlight”, say its founders, and to “acknowledge, celebrate and promote fiction by Canadian and American women writers”.
Continue reading...The Five author Hallie Rubenhold is behind plans for a permanent memorial in London’s East End to counter ‘sick’ Ripper tours
The social historian Hallie Rubenhold is planning to commemorate the lives of the women murdered by Jack the Ripper with a new mural in Whitechapel, which she hopes will be a counterpoint to the “atrocious” Ripper tours on offer in the area.
With the project already receiving tentative backing from authorities and local institutions, Rubenhold said: “It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of finding the right place.”
This has gone up on Ebor Street in Whitechapel. It's amazing to see the womens' faces here. It feels right. This is a temporary mural and an advert for the book, but I'd like to start a campaign for a permanent mural commemorating the victims. How do I do this, Twitter? pic.twitter.com/jVs3kK3DYs
Continue reading...The Charles Dickens Museum, located in the townhouse in Bloomsbury, London, into which the writer moved with his young family in 1837, has acquired a private collection of more than 300 items, including unpublished letters, personal objects, portraits, sketches, playbills and books
Continue reading...Bridge 108 by Anne Charnock; QualityLand by Marc-Uwe Kling; The Library of the Unwritten by AJ Hackwith; The Last Day by Andrew Hunter Murray; and The Sisters Grimm by Menna van Praag
Anne Charnock won the 2018 Arthur C Clarke award for Dreams Before the Start of Time, exploring the future of reproductive technology; her fourth novel is the dystopian Bridge 108 (47North, £8.99). At the close of the 21st century, bushfires and drought have ravaged Europe and refugees in their thousands are flocking to Britain. Among them are 12-year-old Caleb and his mother, following in the footsteps of Caleb’s father, making the gruelling journey from Spain in hope of a better life. After his mother’s disappearance, Caleb finds himself among other illegal immigrants working in a clothing factory. The narrative charts his perilous journey across a bleak future England, meeting others as desperate as himself as he searches for his parents. By switching viewpoint from chapter to chapter, it builds a comprehensive picture of a country beset by the effects of climate change,where citizens are forced into indentured servitude. Charnock tells her story through the lives of ordinary people caught up in situations beyond their control, and Bridge 108 is all the more powerful for that.
Continue reading...Note to butler on how to serve gin punch is among letters acquired from US collector
Charles Dickens was precise with instructions for his dinner party: no champagne and as little wine as possible for guests before the food and definitely only he and his magazine editor friend to be given gin punch during the meal.
“Basically don’t get them too trolleyed beforehand,” said Cindy Sughrue, explaining Dickens’s detailed note to his butler. He was also worried that some guests would not be up to spirits. “Dickens made his own gin punch, he loved it and and it could be quite strong.”
Related: The best of strolls: walking Charles Dickens’ London
Continue reading...Announcing the winners of this years Laugh Out Loud awards for the funniest children’s books, Rosen took aim at the ‘oppressive’ solemnity of today’s schools
In an “oppressive” education system, children need the release of humour to make the world less frightening, according to the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen.
Revealing the winners of the Laugh Out Loud awards, which celebrate the year’s funniest children’s books, Rosen said that when he is performing his comic poems such as Chocolate Cake and No Breathing in Class, children “will look at their teachers, as if to say, ‘Are we allowed to laugh. Is it permitted?’
Continue reading...Spokesman for House says it is ‘unacceptable’ for former Speaker to name people without their prior knowledge
John Bercow has been severely criticised by the House of Commons after naming staff members without their prior knowledge in his autobiography.
A spokesman for the House said it was “unacceptable” for the former Speaker to identify current and former members of staff for “the purpose of financial gain or commercial success”.
Continue reading...Meant to celebrate Black History Month, writers say a black Frankenstein does not count as representation
Barnes and Noble, America’s largest bookseller, is withdrawing a new series of classic book covers aimed at promoting diversity less than 24-hours after its launch, following a backlash from writers who say simply changing the skin color of characters like Romeo and Juliet or Frankenstein does nothing to address the publishing industry’s underlying diversity problems.
The new “Diverse Editions” series was announced on Tuesday to honor Black History Month and due to hit shelves on Wednesday. The project saw 12 classic young adult novels receive new covers, the protagonists now “culturally diverse”. Frankenstein has brown skin, not green, while a kissing Romeo and Juliet have darker skin tones and kinky hair textures. “For the first time ever, all parents will be able to pick up a book and see themselves in a story,” the company explains on the back cover of the books.
Related: 'It's unprecedented': how bookstores are handling the American Dirt controversy
Us: Hey, it’d be great if you could publish writers of color—
Publishing industry: Black Frankenstein https://t.co/QF3iWmfvBK
Okay, real talk: here is why the whole Barnes and Noble and Random Penguin #DiverseEditions fundamentally doesn’t not work.
In their own words: pic.twitter.com/R9c9CXeyMs
Poet, singer and memoirist – honoured this week by PEN for ‘literary service’ – sends signed first editions after learning of thefts at Portland store
The poet and punk-rock star Patti Smith has added another string to her bow: bookshop defender. After reading about a break-in at an independent bookshop in Oregon, the musician got in touch to offer her help.
Last month, burglars smashed display cases in Portland’s Passages bookshop and stole more than 100 rare and valuable volumes, including Smith’s complete lyrics, forcing owner David Abel to shut up shop for the next two weeks. Some of the books, he said, were irreplaceable.
Continue reading...The multilingual scholar was renowned for broadening English readers’ horizons and for his passionate moral engagement
The eminent literary critic and essayist George Steiner, who explored the power and limitations of language and culture in a series of hugely influential books, has died at the age of 90.
Born in 1929 in Paris to Viennese parents, Steiner and his family left for New York in 1940, shortly before the Nazis occupied the city. He was one of only two Jewish pupils in his French school to survive the Holocaust, and this experience clearly marked his future work.
Continue reading...Novelist says that in the run-up to the 2016 election, she began to imagine a life where Clinton ‘made different choices, personally and professionally’
Hillary Rodham Clinton recounts, in her memoir Living History, how Bill Clinton “asked me to marry him again, and again, and I always said no”. Until, of course, she said yes. Curtis Sittenfeld’s forthcoming novel Rodham imagines how the life of the US’s first female presidential candidate might have gone if she’d continued to refuse the man who would become president.
Out in June, Rodham takes an “ordinary American girl … and explores how her life might have turned out if she had stayed an independent woman”, announced publisher Doubleday.
Continue reading...Coalition that formed in response to controversy around the new novel met with Macmillan Publishers on Monday
Members of the #DignidadLiteraria movement, a coalition that formed in response to the controversy around the new novel American Dirt, gathered outside the offices of Macmillan Publishers in New York on Monday to announce an agreement made with the publisher in the wake of heavy criticism about the book and the publishing industry.
Macmillan agreed to committing to substantially increasing Latinx representation, from authors to staff, at the publisher. The company agreed to write up an action plan within 90 days and meet with representatives from the movement in 30 days, said David Bowles, a writer and cofounder of the #DignidadLiteraria movement, at a press conference held moments after a private meeting with the publisher.
Related: Publisher cancels Jeanine Cummins tour for American Dirt over safety fears
Continue reading...Horror novelist says that the social network has allowed false information to be disseminated, and that he is also concerned about users’ privacy
Stephen King has quit Facebook, saying that he is not comfortable with the “flood of false information allowed in its political advertising”.
The bestselling horror novelist, a prolific user of social media, also said he was not “confident in [Facebook’s] ability to protect its users’ privacy”. King made the announcement on Twitter, where he has 5.6m followers. His Facebook page has been deleted.
Continue reading...Each of the American author’s 56 novels was a bestseller and her fiction was extolled by writers from Scott Turow to David Foster Wallace
Mary Higgins Clark, the “Queen of Suspense” who topped charts with each of her 56 novels, has died at the age of 92.
Simon & Schuster president Carolyn Reidy said that Higgins Clark died on 31 January in Naples, Florida, from complications of old age. The author published her first novel, Where Are the Children? in 1975, going on to sell more than 100m copies of her compulsive suspense novels in the US alone. She published her most recent thriller, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry, about a journalist investigating sexual misconduct at a television news network, in November.
Continue reading...Some stores aren’t carrying the novel, which has been criticized for stereotypical depictions of Mexicans, while others are promoting it alongside works by Latinx writers
Independent bookstores across the US have found themselves in the crosshairs of the unabating controversy over American Dirt, with some booksellers debating how they should promote the novel, and redistribute the profits.
Jeanine Cummins’ third novel drew swift criticism following its 21 January release for its stereotypical depictions of Mexicans and inaccurate representation of undocumented immigrants in America. The large advance Cummins received raised questions about who gets to profit from telling the story of the border crisis.
Related: American Dirt: why critics are calling Oprah's book club pick exploitative and divisive
Here's our American Dirt display. pic.twitter.com/7XJCMDg4li
Continue reading...