Publishing Company Blog: September 2021

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Origin story of Dennis the Menace’s jumper to be revealed

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Beano’s longest-running character, comic strip The Epic Yarn of Awesomeness will tell the garment’s backstory

Margaret Atwood and JM Coetzee demand release of jailed Iranian writers

A letter by PEN America, signed by dozens of high-profile writers and artistic figures, calls for Baktash Abtin, Keyvan Bajan, and Reza Khandan Mahabadi to be acquitted

‘Absolute beast’: critics go wild for No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s last Bond film

Despite a few dissenting voices bemoaning a bloated plot, film reviewers largely agree that this is the 007 blockbuster to tempt audiences back into cinemas

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

How to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X Kendi awarded MacArthur ‘genius grant’

Writers Daniel Alarcón and Reginald Dwayne Betts have also been named on the list of 25 new fellows to receive $625,000 from the foundation

Monday, September 27, 2021

Laura Jean McKay wins the Arthur C Clarke award

The Australian writer has won the prestigious science fiction prize for her debut novel The Animals in That Country

Marvel sues to retain control of Avengers characters

The comics giant has issued lawsuits in a bid to hold on to the copyright of heroes including Spider-Man and Iron Man

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Move over David Walliams … the hunt is on to diversify children’s books

Schemes provide mentors and funding to help aspiring writers on low incomes enter market dominated by white celebrities

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Pennsylvania school district reverses ban on books by authors of colour

The Central York school board has gone back on its decision to bar a list of titles by or about people of colour from being used as educational resources

Netflix acquires works of Roald Dahl as it escalates streaming wars

Content deal over author of children’s classics such as Matilda and the BFG is firm’s biggest to date

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

French book prize under fire after judge’s partner makes shortlist

Goncourt secretary defends decision but criticises same judge for writing scathing review of rival work

Einstein’s handwritten calculations for theory of relativity to be auctioned for €3m

The rare document, which records attempts to explain an anomaly in the orbit of Mercury, is ‘a fascinating dive into the mind of the greatest scientist of the 20th century’

Richard Osman’s second book is one of the fastest-selling novels since records began

The Pointless presenter’s second crime novel, The Man Who Died Twice, has sold 114,202 copies in its first week on sale

Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to be formally handed back to Iraq

The 3,600-year-old tablet that shows parts of a Sumerian poem will be returned by the US to the country it was taken from in 1991

Charlie and Lola author Lauren Child says children’s books should be taken seriously

The former children’s laureate will launch her manifesto this evening, in which she counters the assumption that work created for children is lesser

Macquarie Dictionary celebrates 40 years of ‘unashamedly’ Australian English

Dictionary’s publication symbolised the ditching of colonial English and cultural cringe

Monday, September 20, 2021

Daniel Craig has given us ‘woke’ James Bond, says Charlie Higson

Young Bond author highlights how much the spy has changed since Ian Fleming created him in 1953

First edition of Frankenstein sells for record breaking $1.17m

An ‘exceptionally rare’ first edition of Mary Shelley’s gothic classic has broken the world auction record for a printed work by a woman

Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk to serialise new book on Substack

Newsletter platform pays upfront sum for Greener Pastures, with no strings attached over what he writes

Friday, September 17, 2021

Nick Cave to publish memoir about the years after his son’s death

Faith, Hope and Carnage will reflect on the singer’s experience of grief and tragedy after Arthur, his child, died six years ago aged 15

Thursday, September 16, 2021

And then there were two: novel thought to have inspired Agatha Christie gets UK publication

The Invisible Host, a 1930 murder mystery by two US journalists, has remarkable parallels with Christie’s most successful work

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Newly discovered Tennessee Williams story published for the first time

The 1952 work by the the Streetcar Named Desire playwright was found in Yale University’s archives

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Top general feared Trump would launch nuclear war, Woodward book reports

General Milley worried about Trump’s ‘trigger point’ after the election and monitored him to prevent catastrophic military strike

Nadifa Mohamed is sole British writer to make Booker prize shortlist

The author of The Fortune Men will now compete with five other novelists from South Africa, Sri Lanka and the US for the 2021 award

Alex Clark explores how the Booker shortlist tunes in to the worries of our age

Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You tops UK book charts

In its first week on sale, Rooney’s new novel has outsold Jamie Oliver and beaten day-one sales of her previous book Normal People by 1,200% at Waterstones

Lord of the Rings actors praise Italian man who lives as a hobbit

Elijah Wood among stars to laud project of Nicolas Gentile to transform land into personal ‘shire’

Monday, September 13, 2021

Melania Trump like Marie Antoinette, says former aide in hotly awaited book

Stephanie Grisham says former first lady refused to condemn Capitol attackers and believed husband’s lie about election fraud

US senators condemn Amazon for promoting anti-vaxxer books

Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff have written to complain about search algorithms that appear to spread misinformation

Steve Bannon prepped Jeffrey Epstein for CBS interview, Michael Wolff claims

Ex-Trump strategist told financier to ‘stick to his message, which is that he is not a paedophile’, New York Times reports

Scientists identify key conditions to set up a creative ‘hot streak’

Researchers use AI to reveal runs of artistic success are commonly preceded by an experimental phase

Sunday, September 12, 2021

The spy writer who held a grudge against Le Carré comes in from the cold

Willem Frederik Hermans thought the Briton’s famous book was based on his. Now one of his best works is coming out in the UK

Friday, September 10, 2021

Spider-Man beats Superman in record $3.6m comic sale

A copy of Peter Parker’s debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 has swooped over the Man of Steel to fetch the highest price ever paid for a single comic

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Ex-Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham to release White House book

Grisham, also a former top aide to Melania Trump, to publish memoir containing ‘surprising new scandals’ in October

Britain’s imperial legacy in spotlight of Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize

Longlist for 2021 prize includes Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and Alex Renton’s Blood Legacy alongside 11 other titles

Fiona Foley wins Premier’s literary award for ‘significant truth-telling account’ of Queensland’s history

The Badtjala artist and academic has won the Queensland Premier’s Literary award for Biting the Clouds

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Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Women’s prize for fiction goes to Susanna Clarke’s ‘mind-bending’ Piranesi

Clarke’s follow-up to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was praised by judges as ‘a truly original, unexpected flight of fancy’

‘I don’t care’: text shows modern poetry began much earlier than believed

Academic finds that lines widely reproduced in the eastern Roman empire are ‘stressed’ in a way that laid the foundations for what we recognise as poetry

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Wainwright prize for nature writing goes to James Rebanks for English Pastoral

Award comes during booming year for nature books, with sales over the last two months reaching £2.8m

Booksellers warn over Christmas supplies amid UK lorry driver shortage

Shops build up stocks early to offset bottlenecks as publishers warn Brexit and pandemic is delaying distribution

Round the Twist: Australian children’s TV show to become stage musical

Adaptation of Paul Jennings’ television show will be written and composed by Paul Hodge

Monday, September 6, 2021

‘Novel of the moment’: Sally Rooney’s third book hits the shelves

Excited fans queue to meet author at Piccadilly launch event as Beautiful World, Where Are You smashes order records

‘What is this if not magic?’ The Italian man living as a hobbit

After building his own version of Middle-earth, Nicolas Gentile has thrown a ‘ring’ into Mount Vesuvius

Fragments of medieval Merlin manuscript found in Bristol library reveal ‘chaster’ story

Parchment fragments discovered in bindings of much later volumes reveal ‘subtle but significant’ variations on Arthurian legend

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Hilary Mantel contrasts Dominic Cummings with Thomas Cromwell

Author adds Cromwell wouldn’t have gone on holiday during a crisis, in apparent shot at Dominic Raab

‘Unreal’: Samaritans volunteer has life turned around by six-figure book deal

James Norbury’s self-published Big Panda and Tiny Dragon inspired by the lives of callers to helpline

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Hilary Mantel: I am ashamed to live in nation that elected this government

Double Booker prize winner tells La Repubblica she may take Irish citizenship to feel European again

Pages

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Monday, September 27, 2021

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Monday, September 20, 2021

Friday, September 17, 2021

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Monday, September 13, 2021

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Friday, September 10, 2021

Thursday, September 9, 2021

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Monday, September 6, 2021

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Friday, September 3, 2021