Chaired by the writer and journalist John Walsh, a panel of four publishing insiders deliberated the thorny subject of how to get published in front of a large, well-informed, near-capacity audience of writers at the London Book Fair. Read more
The Masterclass on Historical Fiction at the London Book Fair involved two of the most successful authors in the genre, Bernard Cornwall, author of the Sharpe novels and the Arthurian trilogy, and Philippa Gregory, who first made her name in the field with A Respectable Trade and has more recentlywritten a series of Tudornovels. Read more
The London Book Fair/Daily Mail Masterclasses are running again this year in conjunction with The Arvon FoundationThe celebrated Arvon creative writing courses cover four and a half days and range from Novel Writing to Starting to Write. Some grants are available. (http://www.arvonfoundation.org). The LBF is much earlier this year, so the Masterclasses are on Saturday 4th March at ExCel, the Fair’s new venue in Docklands. Read more
A special report from the 2006 Masterclasses at the London Book Fair
In four packed sessions at the London Book Fair, the Daily Mail Masterclasses provided excellent coaching for aspiring writers. Our second report deals with writing fiction. Read more
A special report from the 2006 Masterclasses at the London Book Fair
In four packed sessions at the London Book Fair, the Daily Mail Masterclasses provided excellent coaching for aspiring writers. Our third report deals with writing for children. Read more
In the 2009 How to Get Published Masterclass at the London Book Fair a packed audience listened intently to a varied group of speakers in a session chaired by journalist Danuta Kean. The panel comprised Bill Swainson, senior editor at Bloomsbury, Simon Trewin, co-head of the book department at new agency United AgentsClick for United Agents Agents References listing, and authors Kate Mosse, Lola Joye and Read more
‘I always quote Kurt Vonnegut. He said in the early part of his career he was dismissed as a science fiction writer and that critics tend to put genre books, including sci-fi, in the bottom drawer of their desk... It's true. I get the New York Times every Sunday. In 37 novels, I've never had a stand-alone review. I'm always in the crime round-up.
A survey of 787 members of the Society of Authors (SoA) has found that a third of translators and a quarter of illustrators have lost work to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Translators are also more likely to use AI to support their work, with 37% of respondents saying they have done so, followed by 25% of non-fiction writers.
The author Lynne Reid Banks, known for her novel The L-Shaped Room and her children's book series The Indian in the Cupboard, has died at the age of 94.
I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn't want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are ... yech. Read more
Until we have a mechanism to test for artificial intelligence, writers need a tool to maintain trust in their work. So I decided to be completely open with my readers
'All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.'