Harlan Ellison obituary

Short story writer who regenerated the science fiction genre in the US

To some, Harlan Ellison was the finest short story writer to have emerged from America’s science fiction ghetto in generations. The Los Angeles Times described him as “the 20th-century Lewis Carroll”; JG Ballard thought he was “an aggressive and restless extrovert who conducts life at a shout and his fiction at a scream”; Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, called him “the only living organism I know whose natural habitat is hot water”.

Ellison, who has died aged 84, wrote 70 books, some 400 short stories, dozens of TV screenplays and more than 1,000 essays, introductions and columns. His stories could be whimsical and cruel, playful and painful, sentimental and shocking. He loathed being branded a “science fiction” author, although a tally of more than 40 awards proved that SF fans held him in high regard. He was given lifetime achievement prizes by the World Fantasy awards and the Horror Writers Association, and received the Writers Guild of America award four times. In 1996 he said: “What I write is hyperactive magic realism. I take the received world and I reflect it back through the lens of fantasy, turned slightly so you get a different portrait.”

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Writers and publishers trade blows over plummeting author pay levels

Responding to a survey that found the median author income had dropped to £10,500, Publishers Association said the figures were ‘unrecognisable’

The Society of Authors has issued a sharply worded challenge to the UK’s biggest publishers after the chief executive of the Publishers Association questioned new figures revealing the plummeting incomes of writers, describing them as “unrecognisable”.

Related: Publishers are paying writers a pittance, say bestselling authors

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Harlan Ellison: where to start reading

He wrote more than 1,700 stories, film and TV scripts – so here are five of the best by a giant of speculative fiction, who has died aged 84

Related: Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison dies aged 84

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
This nightmarish short story – published in 1967 and winner of a Hugo – comes from a “special place of anguish”, Ellison said. It is set in a future where a supercomputer, AM – Allied Mastercomputer – has wiped out all of humanity apart from five people, and spends its time devising tortures for them underground. “There was virtually nothing out there; had been nothing that could be considered anything for over 100 years. Only the blasted skin of what had once been the home of billions. Now there were only five of us, down here inside, alone with AM,” the narrator explains. “He would never let us go. We were his belly slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time. We would be forever with him, with the cavern-filling bulk of the creature machine, with the all-mind soulless world he had become.” Gruesomely, brilliantly disturbing.

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Plus-size superhero Faith to get own movie

Sony and Valiant Comics are teaming up to make the ‘sci-fi-loving geek with telekinetic superpowers’ Hollywood’s first plus-sized superhero

Hollywood is breaking new ground with its first plus-sized superhero, as a film featuring Faith Herbert, AKA Zephyr, from Valiant Comics’ Harbinger stories gets underway.

According to Deadline, Sony have hired writer Maria Melnik (American Gods) to work on the project. The film is part of a 2015 deal the studio made with Valiant to develop movies from the publisher’s stable of characters. (Sony currently has the Vin Diesel starrer Bloodshot in development.)

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Royal Society of Literature admits 40 new fellows to address historical biases

The 40 Under 40 initiative has chosen a diverse set of fresh fellows to reflect the ‘bold expressiveness’ of a new generation in institution that has been ‘overwhelmingly’ white and male

Nearly 200 years after it was founded, the venerable Royal Society of Literature is stepping away from its “overwhelmingly white, male, metropolitan and middle class” history, with the appointment of 40 new writing fellows under the age of 40, ranging from the award-winning Jamaican poet Kei Miller to the bestselling English novelist Sarah Perry.

The RSL’s 40 Under 40 initiative saw publishers, literary agents, theatres and author organisations put forward an array of names to a panel of RSL fellows, who were looking to honour “the achievements of Britain’s younger writers” with the selection of a new generation of fellows. Prior to the initiative, only three of the 523 fellows were under 40, with none under 30 and the average age being 70.

Bola Agbaje, Jenn Ashworth, Laura Bates, Jay Bernard, Emily Berry, Hannah Berry, Lucy Caldwell, Sophie Collins, Inua Ellams, Lara Feigel, Edmund Gordon, James Graham, Rosalind Harvey, Daisy Hay, Rachel Hewitt, Ella Hickson, Sarah Howe, Robert Icke, Lucy Kirkwood, Sabrina Mahfouz, Kei Miller, Nadifa Mohamed, Helen Mort, Barney Norris, Irenosen Okojie, Chibundu Onuzo, Vinay Patel, Sarah Perry, Lucy Prebble, Ross Raisin, Gwendoline Riley, Amy Sackville, Sunjeev Sahota, Warsan Shire, Deborah Smith, Polly Stenham, Sara Taylor, Adam Thirlwell, Eley Williams, Evie Wyld.

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The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada review – an eco-terror mini epic

The old live longer while the young die off in this sprightly Japanese satire

The high concept of Yoko Tawada’s surprising new novel, translated by Margaret Mitsutani, is that old people are living longer than ever, but children are dying before adulthood. It’s hinted that this may be due to some environmental collapse, which has isolated Japan from the rest of the world. The main thread follows four generations of a family struggling with what this means for their youngest member, Mumei.

In 144 pages we get a mini-epic of eco-terror, family drama and speculative fiction. “We must save Tokyo even if it means sacrificing all the outlying prefectures!” But this is no dystopian novel like The Children of Men. Tawada’s interest is satirical as much as tragic, with public holidays chosen by popular vote (Labour Day becomes Being Alive Is Enough Day) and a privatised police force whose activities now centre on its brass band.

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Publishers are paying writers a pittance, say bestselling authors

Philip Pullman, Antony Beevor and Sally Gardner call for fairer share of profits, as survey shows full-time writers earn below minimum wage

Philip Pullman, Antony Beevor and Sally Gardner are calling on publishers to increase payments to authors, after a survey of more than 5,500 professional writers revealed a dramatic fall in the number able to make a living from their work.

The latest report by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), due to be published on Thursday, shows median earnings for professional writers have plummeted by 42% since 2005 to under £10,500 a year, well below the minimum annual income of £17,900 recommended by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Women fare worse, according to the survey, earning 75% of what their male counterparts do, a 3% drop since 2013 when the last ALCS survey was conducted.

The word exploitation comes to mind. M​any of us are being treated badly

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American librarians defend renaming Laura Ingalls Wilder award

Professional body the ALA says the Little House on the Prairie author’s ‘complex legacy’ of racist attitudes was not consistent with its values

The American Library Association (ALA) has stressed that its decision to drop Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from its children’s literature award due to racist sentiments in her books is not “an attempt to censor, limit, or deter access” to the Little House on the Prairie author’s books.

The organisation announced on Sunday that the board of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) had voted 12 to zero in favour of changing the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder award to the Children’s literature legacy award. The prize was first awarded in 1954 to Wilder herself, and has been won by some of America’s best-loved children’s authors, from EB White to Beverly Cleary.

Related: Laura Ingalls Wilder's name removed from book award over racism concerns

Related: World Fantasy award drops HP Lovecraft as prize image

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Ray guns: will they ever be more than cool toys?

Humans have dreamed of weaponised lasers since HG Wells first mooted them. Should we be careful what we wish for?

You can thank HG Wells for the idea of a ray gun. Weaponised lasers, microwave beams, particle beams and so on ... Wells’s Martian death rays in 1897’s War of the Worlds sparked the concept.

Twenty years later one Albert Einstein offered a proof of concept in 1917, and then Charles Townes finally made one (OK, a laser) in 1951. Star Trek injected further vim to the fantasy of handheld zappers with its phasers, followed by the blasters of Star Wars – enough appetite to stimulate real military research – remember Ronald “Ray gun” and his Star Wars programme?

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Do libraries run by volunteers check out?

Over the last decade, around 500 UK libraries have been handed over to ordinary people to run for free. This option is seen as a good alternative to closures – but how do the volunteers feel?

It is just before 7pm on a Tuesday and Wilsden library is about to close. There are a few stragglers, mainly mums with small girls who have been at the dance class in the village hall, where the library occupies one corner.

Wilsden is just one of 15 community-managed libraries in the borough of Bradford, West Yorkshire. It opens for one day a week and is staffed completely by volunteers such as Simon Dickerson, whohas volunteered at the library since it became community-managed in 2011. Prior to that, the library was run and staffed by Bradford council, but budget cuts meant that Wilsden’s library, along with branches in nearby Denholme and Wrose, were earmarked to close.

Related: The Guardian view on books for all: libraries give us power | Editorial

The rise of the volunteer-run library is evolution in its purest sense: motivated by a desire to survive

Related: The Tories are savaging libraries – and closing the book on social mobility | John Harris

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Donald Hall, US poet laureate and prize-winning man of letters, dies at 89

• Daughter confirms death at home in New Hampshire
• Hall was known for work on love, loss, baseball and the past

Donald Hall, a prolific and award-winning poet and man of letters who was widely admired for his sharp humor and painful candor about nature, mortality, baseball and the distant past, has died. He was 89.

Hall’s daughter, Philippa Smith, confirmed on Sunday that her father died on Saturday at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, after being in hospice care for some time.

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Laura Ingalls Wilder's name removed from book award over racial concerns

American Library Association changes award name after examining ‘expressions of stereotypical attitudes’ in books

A division of the American Library Association has voted to remove the name of Laura Ingalls Wilder from a major children’s book award, over concerns about how the author portrayed African Americans and Native Americans.

Related: Pioneer Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder review – gritty memoir dispels Little House myths

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'Xenophobic and racist': Elena Ferrante warns of danger to Italy from Matteo Salvini

In her Guardian column, author of the bestselling Neapolitan novels makes rare intervention in politics to voice fears of interior minister’s ‘racist fists’

• Ferrante’s column: ‘Matteo Salvini seems persuasive – until he bangs his racist fists’

The Italian novelist Elena Ferrante has made a rare foray into the political arena, warning of the dangers of underestimating the “xenophobic and racist” new interior minister Matteo Salvini who heads up Italy’s far-right League party.

Writing in her column for the Guardian’s Weekend magazine, the reclusive Ferrante, who has kept her identity hidden, said she had never been politically active, and while she has “feared for the fate of democracy” in Italy, she has more often “thought our worries have been deliberately exaggerated”.

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'Wilful misreading': Lionel Shriver replies to critics in diversity row

Novelist responds to the reaction against her comments on diversity in publishing, accusing her critics of ‘malicious misinterpretation’

Lionel Shriver has responded to the vituperative row that followed her recent comments about Penguin Random House’s diversity scheme, saying that it was not diversity but quotas that she was objecting to and calling out what she described as the “malicious misinterpretation” of her original essay.

In a piece for the Spectator this month, Shriver objected to the publisher’s goal for its staff and authors to represent UK society by 2025. “Drunk on virtue, Penguin Random House no longer regards the company’s raison d’etre as the acquisition and dissemination of good books,” she wrote. “Rather, the organisation aims to mirror the percentages of minorities in the UK population with statistical precision.”

Related: Diversity in publishing is under attack. I hear the sound of knuckles dragging | Hanif Kureishi

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'The evil was profound': Fanny Burney letter describes mastectomy in 1812

Letter, which has been digitised by the British Library for the first time, recounts the novelist’s agonising experience of surgery in an age before anaesthesia

Fanny Burney’s graphic account of her mastectomy without anaesthetic in 1811, in which the novelist writes to her sister how she “began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still! so excruciating was the agony” – has been fully digitised and placed online for the first time by the British Library.

One of more than 300 manuscripts, letters and first editions from the Restoration and 18th century collection digitised for the library’s Discovering Literature venture, Burney’s 12-page letter sees the author of Evelina explain to her sister that she was eventually persuaded to go ahead with the operation by her doctors after her breast cancer diagnosis a year before. Ensuring that her husband and son were absent, she submitted to her surgeons at her home in Paris.

Related: Fanny Burney wrote one of the most courageous pieces of work I’ve ever encountered

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Matteo Salvini threatens to remove Gomorrah author's police protection

Roberto Saviano has escort to protect him from mafia, but has criticised interior minister

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right interior minister, has threatened to remove the police protection of one of the country’s most famous writers, Roberto Saviano, who has been under threat from organised crime since his breakthrough success about the mafia, Gomorrah, was published in 2006.

Saviano is one of Salvini’s toughest critics and is a constant fixture on Italian media. He is one of hundreds of journalists and writers who are under constant guard in Italy, because of current or previous threats to their safety by the mafia.

Related: 'He's a fool who says foolish things': Italy's Roma face new threat from Matteo Salvini

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Listen and weep: 'Audiobooks outdo films in emotional engagement'

UCL study backed by Audible finds unconscious responses to the same book scenes, witnessed in adaptations across different media, are strongest in the auditory format

As Arya Stark watches from the crowd, tears streaming, King Joffrey toys with her father Ned Stark before executing him in front of a baying crowd. This scene from Game of Thrones is harrowing in any medium – but a new University College London study has found that audiobooks are more “emotionally engaging” than film and television adaptations.

Related: We’re all ears for audiobooks – and here are some of the best

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The future's female? 2000AD's all-women special

A new sci-fi edition has been written and drawn entirely by women, which the comic hopes will put an end to its boy’s club reputation

It’s one of the UK’s most venerable comic weeklies, but is 2000AD, home of Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and Robo-Hunter, still seen as a bit of a boy’s thing? More than 40 years after it first hit the newsstands, that image might be set to change, with a new issue created entirely by female writers, artists, colourists and letterers.

The 2000AD sci-fi special includes Batgirl artist Babs Tarr illustrating a Judge Dredd story, graphic novelist Tillie Walden writing and drawing one of the comic’s famous Future Shock shorts, and Irish novelist and playwright Maura McHugh penning a story about Judge Anderson, Dredd’s telepath colleague.

Related: 40 years of 2000AD: looking back on the future of comic books

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Oxford English Dictionary extends hunt for regional words around the world

From ‘hammajang’ to ‘munted’, lexicographers have issued a worldwide call for regionally distinctive words to define

The Oxford English Dictionary is asking the public to help it mine the regional differences of English around the world to expand its record of the language, with early submissions ranging from New Zealand’s “munted” to Hawaii’s “hammajang”.

Last year, a collaboration between the OED, the BBC and the Forward Arts Foundation to find and define local English words resulted in more than 100 new regional words and phrases being added to the dictionary, from Yorkshire’s “ee bah gum” to the north east’s “cuddy wifter”, a left-handed person. Now, the OED is widening its search to English speakers around the world, with associate editor Eleanor Maier calling the early response “phenomenal”, as editors begin to draft a range of suggestions for inclusion in the dictionary.

Related: A 'gurt' plan: National Poetry Day to celebrate England's local words

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Vida survey of gender bias in literary criticism shows 'stubborn imbalance'

Authors of report warn that continuing dominance of male writers ‘creates a dangerous lens through which the world is viewed’

Vida has warned that the dominance of white male literary critics “creates a dangerous lens through which the world is viewed”, after its annual survey found that female writers accounted for less than 40% of articles and reviews at more than half of major publications.

The feminist arts organisation, which examines the gender imbalance of both critics and authors whose books are reviewed, surveyed 15 major literary publications and found eight failed to reach gender parity in 2017. These included the London Review of Books at 26.9%, the New Yorker at 39.7%, the Times Literary Supplement at 35.9% and the New York Review of Books at 23.3%, down from 46.9% the previous year.

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Does Elon Musk really understand Iain M Banks's 'utopian anarchist' Culture?

The tech entrepreneur has endorsed a vision of monolithic totalitarianism overseen by machiavellian machines – and one that is neither entirely utopian or anarchist

So, Elon Musk has claimed he is a “utopian anarchist” in a way he claims is best described by the late science fiction author Iain M Banks. Which leads to one very relevant question: has Musk actually read any of Banks’s books? In a series of novels, the Scottish author explored “the Culture”: a post-scarcity, hedonistic society where you could create your own drugs in your own body, change gender at will and where freedom was the highest and noblest sign of a civilisation.

Related: 30 years of Culture: what are the top five Iain M Banks novels?

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Reading group webchat with Rebecca West's biographer – post your questions now

Carnegie medal winner slams children’s book publishers for ‘accessible’ prose

Geraldine McCaughrean, accepting award for Where the World Ends, warned that restricting the language children read risks creating a future underclass who are ‘easy to manipulate’

Carnegie medal winner Geraldine McCaughrean has castigated the books industry for dumbing down language in children’s literature, warning that a new focus on “accessible” prose for younger readers will lead to “an underclass of citizens with a small but functional vocabulary: easy to manipulate and lacking in the means to reason their way out of subjugation”.

McCaughrean was named winner on Wednesday of this year’s CILIP Carnegie medal for her historical adventure novel Where the World Ends, 30 years after she first took the prize, the UK’s most esteemed children’s literature award. She used her winner’s speech to attack publishers’ fixation on accessible language, which she called “a euphemism for something desperate”.

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Quentin Blake to auction 'joyful' mother and baby watercolours

Pictures from illustrator’s personal collection will be auctioned for charity in July

Revealing another side to the much-loved illustrator of classic children’s novels such as The BFG and The Twits, Sir Quentin Blake’s series of watercolours of naked mothers with their babies feature in an assortment of pictures from the acclaimed illustrator’s personal collection which are due to be auctioned for charity next month.

The images, drawn for the delivery room at the university hospital in Angers, France, show the women swimming underwater with their babies, among seaweed, or breastfeeding. They form part of a collection of 178 illustrations from Blake which Christie’s will auction between 3 and 12 July to raise money for The House of Illustration, Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity and Survival International.

Related: Quentin Blake: ‘A new Roald Dahl character to draw, nearly 40 years after my first’

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Miles Franklin 2018 shortlist: Gerald Murnane gets first nod in 44-year career

Previous winners Michelle de Kretser and Kim Scott have also been shortlisted for the award

Will Gerald Murnane win the 2018 Miles Franklin for his first nomination in a 44-year literary career? That is the question on the lips of the literary community with the announcement of the shortlist for the $60,000 prize on Sunday night.

Murnane, recently described as “the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of”, has been shortlisted for Border Districts, a loosely autobiographical novel based on meditations on history, the narrator’s own past, and the boundary between life and death.

Related: I saw Patrick White as another dead white male. But his writing changed my world | Christos Tsiolkas

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Harry rotters: Warner Bros cracks down on Potter fan festivals in US

Studio says unauthorized commercial activity needs to be halted but fans liken move to Dementors sucking the joy out of fun

Warner Bros is cracking down on local Harry Potter fan festivals around the US, saying it is necessary to halt unauthorized commercial activity. Fans liken the move to Dementors sucking the joy out of homegrown fun. Festival directors say they will change the events into generic celebrations of magic.

Related: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child review – thrilling Broadway transfer is magic

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Hanif Kureishi steps into row over Lionel Shriver's diversity comments

Writer says Oxbridge men ‘and their lackeys’ have benefited from positive discrimination for centuries

Hanif Kureishi has stepped in to the furore over Lionel Shriver’s comments on diversity condemning the “knuckle-dragging” and “pathetic whining” of an elite who don’t want change.

In an article for the Guardian Kureishi argues that it should be seen as good news that “the master race” is becoming anxious about who they have to hear from.

Related: Diversity in publishing is under attack. I hear the sound of knuckles dragging | Hanif Kureishi

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Withering slights: Emily Brontë was no oddball, author argues

Book published this week by Claire O’Callaghan seeks to dispel ‘damaging myths’ about Wuthering Heights author

Two hundred years after her birth Emily Brontë is still remembered as an oddball, a people-hater and the weirdest of three weird sisters.

But a book published this week aims to rehabilitate the reputation of the author of Wuthering Heights, one of the greatest novels ever written: she may have been shy and reserved but she was not strange and should be seen as a woman ahead of her time, the academic Claire O’Callaghan argues.

Related: Kate Bush makes second tribute to Emily Brontë with art installation

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Stan Lee: police probe reports of elder abuse against Marvel mogul

Restraining order granted against Lee’s business manager, who is accused of taking advantage of the 95-year-old’s condition

Los Angeles police are investigating reports of elder abuse against Stan Lee that come amid a struggle over the life and fortune of the 95-year-old Marvel Comics mogul, court documents showed on Wednesday.

The investigation was revealed in a restraining order granted against Keya Morgan, who in recent months has been acting as Lee’s business manager and personal adviser.

Related: Stan Lee sues former company for $1bn in damages

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Mike McCormack wins €100,000 International Dublin literary award with one-sentence novel

Solar Bones, partly told by a ghost on All Souls’ Day, was initially turned away by major publishers as too uncommercial

It’s not often that an author described on his own Wikipedia page as “disgracefully neglected” is awarded a €100,000 literary prize. But this is where the Irish author Mike McCormack finds himself, with Wednesday’s announcement that he has won the International Dublin literary award for his novel, Solar Bones. As someone who has hovered close to mainstream success without ever shaking off the slightly damning label of “writer’s writer”, he is unsurprisingly delighted.

“I don’t feel neglected today. I don’t know who put that Wiki page up, but I think whoever did will have to rethink that,” he laughs. “I was shocked. I had completely given up hope that I was going to win it. But I’m over the shock now and enjoying myself – very much.”

Related: Solar Bones by Mike McCormack review – an extraordinary hymn to small-town Ireland

To this day, my agent smiles and says, ‘No, I’m not going to tell you how many people turned the book down'

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Einstein's travel diaries reveal 'shocking' xenophobia

Private journals kept by the scientist and humanitarian icon show prejudiced attitudes towards the people he met while travelling in Asia

The publication of Albert Einstein’s private diaries detailing his tour of Asia in the 1920s reveals the theoretical physicist and humanitarian icon’s racist attitudes to the people he met on his travels, particularly the Chinese.

Written between October 1922 and March 1923, the diaries see the scientist musing on his travels, science, philosophy and art. In China, the man who famously once described racism as “a disease of white people” describes the “industrious, filthy, obtuse people” he observes. He notes how the “Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse.” After earlier writing of the “abundance of offspring” and the “fecundity” of the Chinese, he goes on to say: “It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”

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Lionel Shriver dropped from prize judges over diversity comments

Mslexia says that the author’s recent comments would ‘alienate the women we are trying to support’ and she will no longer sit on its award jury

Lionel Shriver has been dropped from the judging panel for a writing competition run by magazine Mslexia, after the author slammed publisher Penguin Random House for its diversity and inclusion policies.

Debbie Taylor, editorial director and founder of Mslexia, said that Shriver’s comments in a piece for the Spectator magazine were “not consistent with Mslexia’s ethos and mission” and would “alienate the very women we are trying to support”. Consequently, Shriver would no longer be a judge on their annual short story competition, she said.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins PEN Pinter prize

Nigerian author wins award in memory of the late Nobel laureate for her ‘refusal to be deterred or detained by the categories of others’

Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been awarded the 2018 PEN Pinter prize. She was hailed by Harold Pinter’s widow, the biographer Antonia Fraser, as a writer who embodies “those qualities of courage and outspokenness which Harold much admired”.

An award-winning novelist – her 2004 debut Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth writers’ prize, Half of a Yellow Sun won her the Orange prize in 2006, and Americanah took the US National Book Critics Circle award in 2014 – Adichie is also known for her TED talks and essays. Her most recent book is Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, which began as advice for a friend about how to raise her daughter as a feminist.

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First novel inspired by CIA's Doctor Zhivago plan nets $2m book deal

Lara Prescott’s We Were Never Here recounts how the CIA used Boris Pasternak’s novel as a propaganda tool during the cold war

Last month, Lara Prescott was preparing to graduate from her three-year creative writing fellowship at the University of Texas. Two weeks later, she is sitting on book deals worth at least $2m (£1.5m), after publishers on both sides of the Atlantic battled to get their hands on her first novel.

Prescott’s We Were Never Here tells the story of how the CIA smuggled copies of Boris Pasternak’s classic novel Doctor Zhivago into Russia during the cold war in an attempt to seed unrest. Drawing from the voices of Pasternak’s mistress and muse Olga, as well the women of the CIA typing pool involved in the mission, the novel provoked a fierce bidding war when it was submitted by Prescott’s agent last month.

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Publisher defends diversity drive after Lionel Shriver's attack

Penguin Random House has responded to the novelist’s criticisms, saying it aims to ‘reflect the society in which we live’

Lionel Shriver’s blistering assertion that, “drunk on virtue”, Penguin Random House is putting diversity ahead of literary excellence has been dismissed by the publisher, which said on Monday that “books shape our culture, and this should not be driven only by people who come from a narrow section of society”.

Writing in the Spectator, Shriver took issue with an email sent by the publisher, which lays out its goal that by 2025, its authors and staff will reflect the diversity of UK society. The email said: “We want our authors and new colleagues to reflect the UK population taking into account ethnicity, gender, sexuality, social mobility and disability.”

Related: Lionel Shriver: ‘Few writers are willing to put themselves on the line for free speech’

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Audio is publishing’s new star as sales soar across genres

Top thriller writer opts to publish solely in spoken-word format as demand rises

Writers are turning to the spoken word as their preferred medium, encouraged by a boom in audiobook sales that is transforming publishing.

This weekend, audio publisher Audible, owned by Amazon, released an audiobook of Andrew Motion reading 30 mostly unpublished poems as part of his memoir Essex Clay, and thriller writer Brian Freeman has given up on print entirely for his 19th novel, out out next year, which will appear only as an audiobook. “We haven’t even thought about print,” he said. Just 15 years ago, hardly any of his readers chose audio versions of his books. “Now I hear about them all the time. It made sense to do something specifically for the audio market.”

Related: We’re all ears for audiobooks – and here are some of the best

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Fans in fight to restore George Eliot’s Coventry home

Campaign group SAVE Britain’s Heritage hopes the author’s bicentenary next year, and Coventry’s upcoming city of culture status can kickstart a restoration project

Heritage campaigners are battling to restore the Coventry home of one of Britain’s greatest authors to its former glory, as the city prepares to become UK city of culture in 2021.

In its Victorian heyday, Bird Grove in Coventry was a two-storey town house with whitewashed walls and grand staircases, and was considered a classic of its genre. It was also home to a young Mary Ann Evans, better known by her pen name, George Eliot.

Related: Forgotten buildings of Britain - in pictures

The house could be a writers’ retreat, an education centre or a museum dedicated to George Eliot.

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Michael Wolff reveals deal to write Fire and Fury sequel

Journalist and author working on ‘untitled, unscheduled, unfocused’ follow-up to bestselling White House tell-all

Michael Wolff is set to write a sequel to his bestselling White House tell-all book Fire and Fury.

Related: 'It's all explosive': Michael Wolff on Donald Trump

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Bill Gates gives a book to every US student graduating in 2018

The Microsoft mogul is presenting all 4 million students passing out of college this year with a free download of Hans Rosling’s Factfulness

What does every college graduate need? According to Bill Gates, it’s a compendium of statistics. This summer, the software billionaire is set to give a copy of the late Hans Rosling’s Factfulness to every student graduating from a US college.

Published in April, the book lays out Rosling’s argument that the world is actually in a much better state than we think.

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The best recent science fiction – reviews roundup

The Rending and the Nest by Kaethe Schwehn, The Book of M by Peng Shepherd, Pandemic by AG Riddle, The Synapse Sequence by Daniel Godfrey, Awakened by James S Murray and Darren Wearmouth

Kaethe Schwehn’s gripping first novel The Rending and the Nest (Bloomsbury, £18.99) is an addition to the overflowing post-apocalyptic subgenre. In the aftermath of the Rending, which caused 95% of Earth’s population, animals and food inexplicably to disappear, a remnant of humanity scratches a living in scattered enclaves. Seventeen-year-old Mira lives with a disparate group of survivors in a midwestern settlement called Zion, where the sky is continuously grey and the temperature a cool 55F, strange new plants provide fruit for sustenance, and humans scavenge through the Piles – mysterious drifts of debris left over from the Rending. Mira is a complex, well-drawn character, by turns vulnerable and adolescent, then tough and resourceful, as everything she has ever known is ripped away and certainty is replaced by doubt. The reason for the Rending is never explained, and Schwehn is not so much concerned about the why of her premise as its consequences: Mira’s maturing humanity, her loves and loyalties, and how she comes to face situations even stranger and more disturbing than the initial Rending.

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Germaine Greer criticises Beyoncé: 'Why has she always got to be naked?'

Controversial feminist says nudity is ‘usually a sign of submission, inequality’

Germaine Greer has criticised Beyoncé for the “sexual display” in her stage outfits.

Related: Beyoncé & Jay-Z: OTR II review – heart-stopping scenes from a marriage

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Mandela's relatives to visit prisoners as part of Edinburgh book festival

Zindzi Mandela and her grandchildren will hold private reading at Shotts prison

Three relatives of Nelson Mandela, including his youngest daughter, Zindzi, are to visit Scottish inmates and their families as part of the Edinburgh international book festival in August.

Zindzi Mandela, South Africa’s ambassador to Denmark, will take the former leader’s great-granddaughters Zazi, eight, and Ziwelene, seven, to a private reading and discussion in the family unit of Shotts prison in North Lanarkshire.

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Experts condemn 'folly' of pilot scheme using pupils to staff school libraries

Parents, literacy experts, trade unions, teachers and librarians have spoken out against initiative being trialled by the Scottish Borders council

Experts have branded a cost-cutting pilot scheme in Scotland, in which pupil volunteers are replacing school library staff, as “folly” and a false economy.

The Scottish Borders council is implementing a trial in three schools – in Galashiels, Hawick and Peebles – that will see secondary school pupils and other volunteers taking on roles in school libraries. The pilot initiative follows the loss of several librarian jobs last year, according to reports in the Scottish press, and has been attacked by local parents as well as by literacy experts, trade unions, teachers and librarians.

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Mary Wilson: Corbyn leads tributes after death of Harold Wilson's widow

Labour leader says 102-year-old was a ‘wonderful poet and huge support’ to her husband

Jeremy Corbyn and Gordon Brown have led tributes to Mary Wilson, a poet and wife of the former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, who has died aged 102.

Wilson published three volumes of verse and was once touted as a possible poet laureate. In a tweet Corbyn praised her poetry and support for Labour’s election victories in the 60s and 70s.

In '97 I escorted Mary Wilson to open Merton @mencap_charity 1st dementia centre. She had cared for Harold for years & was a great fighter for carers everywhere. #RIP https://t.co/y9mbDUlCZU

Related: Mary Wilson obituary

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 'experimental' new book due in time for 100th birthday

Blending autobiography, literary criticism poetry and philosophy, Little Boy will be published in March 2019, the author’s centenary

The 99-year-old poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one of the last surviving members of the Beat generation, has sold an “experimental” new novel to a major American publisher, and it is due out in time for his 100th birthday.

Ferlinghetti, one of the US’s best-loved poets and a veteran of the second world war, told the New York Times that the book, Little Boy, was “not a memoir, it’s an imaginary me”. He added: “It’s an experimental novel, let’s put it that way … It’s the kind of book that I’ve been writing all my life.”

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Kamila Shamsie wins Women's prize for fiction for 'story of our times'

Home Fire, which reworks Sophocles’ Antigone to tell the story of a British family caught up by Isis, takes £30,000 award

Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, which reworks Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone to tell the story of a British Muslim family’s connection to Islamic State, has won the Women’s prize for fiction, acclaimed by judges as “the story of our times”.

Related: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie review – a contemporary reworking of Sophocles

Related: A long, loving literary line: Kamila Shamsie on the three generations of women writers in her family

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Daša Drndić, 'unflinching' Croatian novelist, dies aged 71

Depicting the atrocities of the 20th century, she won international acclaim for writing that was ‘often brutal, but at the same time beautiful’

Acclaimed Croatian novelist and playwright Daša Drndić, who confronted the atrocities of the 20th century in her writing, has died aged 71, her UK publisher has said.

Drndić had been living with cancer for almost two years, and died on Tuesday night in Rijeka, her publisher MacLehose Press confirmed. Associate publisher Katharina Bielenberg called Drndić’s writing “viscerally angry and often brutal, but at the same time beautiful and entirely human”.

Related: The next Elena Ferrante? The best European fiction coming your way

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'Please, please remain': Bernard-Henri Lévy performs one-man Brexit play

French showman-philosopher begs London audience to save the European project

It was, said audience member Anne von Bennigsen afterwards, “really very French. Fascinating, but just not very ... practical. Nothing particularly concrete. Still, he’s a French intellectual, I suppose. And that’s how he came across.”

Poking fun at Bernard-Henri Lévy may be a national sport in France, but a bemused audience of nearly 1,000 packed Cadogan Hall in London on Monday to hear the 69-year-old philosopher plead with Britain to remain in Europe, in English.

Related: Bernard-Henri Lévy: ‘Europe without the British spirit cannot be Europe’

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Romance writer's bid to stop authors from using word 'cocky' fails in court

Self-published author Faleena Hopkins asserted her right to the word, but judge calls attempt to stop other authors using it ‘weak’

Romance writers around the world can breathe a sigh of relief after a US court ruled that they can continue to use the adjective “cocky” in their book titles, after one author attempted to stop other writers from using the word.

In September 2017, self-published author Faleena Hopkins filed a trademark claim for the word “cocky” in relation to a romance novel series, which was registered by the US Patent and Trademark Office in April 2018. Only series can be registered as trademarks, not individual titles, and common words can’t be registered at all, unless the public associates it with a particular use.

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Marian Keyes attacks 'sexist imbalance' of Wodehouse prize

Novelist admits to ‘grudge’ against comic fiction prize that has never shortlisted her work, and only gone to a woman three times in 18 years

Marian Keyes has revealed that she has a “grudge” against the “sexist imbalance” of the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, which has deemed only three female writers funny enough to win the award in 18 years.

Keyes was speaking at the Hay literary festival, where the winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse award for comic fiction is traditionally announced. This year, however, judges declined to award the prize, announcing in May that none of the 62 books submitted “incited the level of unanimous laughter we have come to expect”.

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24-hour news has cut politicians' shelf life, says Gordon Brown

Former PM says politicians now get about six years at the top, because voters get bored

The age of 24-hour news has brought about the end of long political leaderships, the former prime minister Gordon Brown has said, estimating that a politician’s time at the top is now no more than six years.

Brown told the Hay literary festival in Wales that invasive modern media meant the public got sick of politicians more quickly.

Related: Can Brexit be reversed? Brexit means ... podcast

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I Still Dream by James Smythe review – the catastrophic rise of AI

Sophisticated artificial intelligence and societal meltdown are vividly imagined in this cinematic disaster novel

The central character in I Still Dream is a Cassandra figure called Laura Bow, a tech consultant whose ambivalence towards SCION, an artificial intelligence developed by her father’s company, pits her against her employers. Her story is told across a 50‑year timeline extending into the future and beginning in 1997, when she is a precocious 17-year-old coder. She has just made her own AI, which she names Organon after a Kate Bush song lyric. Organon becomes increasingly sophisticated as the novel progresses, combining the roles of personal assistant, companion and confidant: it picks a playlist for her when she’s running, and prevents her from sending rash messages while drunk; when Laura’s mother dies, it tries to console her by conversing with her in a simulation of her voice.

The doomsday scenario here is more prosaic than The Terminator’s rise-of-the-machines holocaust, but still catastrophic

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