12 January 2015 - What's new
12 January 2015
- When David Harsent received the 2014 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry in the elegant surroundings of the Courtyard at the Wallace Collection in London this week, he had won a prize which has recently been increased to £20,000, the richest prize in British poetry. It's appropriate to think of T S Eliot's money going to a contemporary poet through the generosity of the Eliot Estate. Much of this comes from Cats, the hugely successful musical made out of Eliot's beloved children's book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber and long a global blockbuster. Our News Review this week: 'A poet for dark and dangerous days' wins 2014 T S Eliot Prize.
- Our Latest Writing Opportunity is the Magma Poetry Prize, one for shorter and one for longer poems, both with a first prize of £1,000 and closing on 19 Janaury.
- Our Services for Self-publishers include a complete set of editorial services you may need if you're publishing your own book - Copy editing, Proof-reading, Blurb-writing, Children's Copy editing, Poetry Collection Editing, Indexing and Manuscript Typing.
- 'I began with thinking about how almost all families have such a sense of pride in their specialness, even if they have no real reason to make them feel so proud. I think that every family has stories that they choose. They filter out many of the stories that they could have, and they select one or two to be their family's stories. I'm always interested in why those... why not others? Anne Tyler, author of The Accidental Tourist, talking about her new novel A Spool of Blue Thread in the Bookseller, quoted in our Comment column.
- Bob's Journal is a long-running column from writer Bob Ritchie described by fellow EastEnders script-writer Pippa McCarthy: 'Just discovered your web page... I've just spent the last hour crying with laughter with periodic yelps of 'been there!'... I'm going to make my entire family read your diary. Then perhaps will understand own bizarre behaviour every time I start a script... Anyway, will shut up now but just wanted to say you have cheered me up no end. It's brilliant.'
- Our links this week: it's not Amazon but an overcrowded writing field which is killing writing, Kindle Unlimited and the ongoing commoditization of books - Tech News and Analysis; articles about China from last year's archive from US trade journal Publishers' Weekly, Top 12 Articles of 2014 on Publishing in Asia and South Asia; musings on the writer's life, BookBrunch - A small price to pay for the writing life; a sensational new French novel, Michel Houellebecq and the Charlie Hebdo Attack - Publishing Perspectives; the power of recommendation by the powerful; When Mark Zuckerberg Likes a Book, Sales Soar - NYTimes.com; and some amazing figures, How Much Can Chinese Authors Earn? Millions, Actually - Publishing Perspectives.
- 'All the information you need can be given in dialogue.' The great Elmore Leonard in our Writers' Quotes.
