Last week, Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain was announced this year's Booker Prize winner. It's no small feat for any writer, but what makes this win so spectacular is the fact that Shuggie Bain is a debut novel. Read more
Though there were four debuts on the Booker shortlist, it's been more than a decade since a debut won. And with two magisterial novels from established writers in Maaza Mengiste's The Shadow King and Tsitsi Dangarembga's This Mournable Body on the list, first-timer Douglas Stuart's success may come as a surprise. Read more
The Nigerian-American author won the Orange Prize in 2007 and her ‘Half of a Yellow Sun' has been voted the best of the Women's Prize's 25 years of winners.
Two African women are in the running for the 2020 Booker Prize, in a historic first for the UK's most prestigious literary prize - and a major boost for storytellers on the continent.
In the midst of a global pandemic, almost nothing is proceeding as normal. And yet, on a dim October morning, the Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist announcement went brightly, briefly and virtually streaming into homes and revealing the five books that had moved one step further towards winning Canada's largest and arguably most prestigious literary award.
Hilary Mantel will not win a third Booker prize with the final novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, after American writers made a near clean sweep of this year's shortlist.
Critically acclaimed author Irenosen Okojie has won the AKO Caine prize for African writing, crediting her win with giving her "extra confidence" as a black, female experimental writer who has felt she was "operating on the fringes". Read more
The Women's Prize Trust is launching Discoveries, a writers' development programme offering aspiring female writers of all ages and backgrounds "encouragement and support" at the beginning of their creative journeys. Read more
‘The thing I like about novels is that they are a more forgiving form. You can make missteps. It's harder to write a really good short story - I'm more aware of the flaws in my short stories.
Michael Morpurgo has denied a Sunday Times report that he "refused" to include The Merchant of Venice in a forthcoming Shakespeare anthology for children due to antisemitism. Read more
Pitching a manuscript isn't for cowards, the thin skinned, or those with no endurance. Believing your project is worthy, truly believing in it, is required, as is the patience of a saint.
Poets & Writers wrapped up its 50th anniversary in 2020 by announcing a $250,000 contribution from Barnes & Noble founder-and longtime P&W supporter-Len Riggio. The donation from Riggio and his wife, Louise, will be used for new initiatives to extend the organization's support of Black and marginalized writers.
George Saunders once said, ‘when you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you'...but what is the best way to start? Read more
George Orwell died at University College Hospital, London, on 21 January 1950 at the early age of 46. This means that unlike such long-lived contemporaries as Graham Greene (died 1991) or Anthony Powell (died 2000), the vast majority of his compendious output (21 volumes to date) is newly out of copyright as of 1 January. Read more
It might be a picture of gloom and doom for most business sectors in 2020 though surprisingly, the publishing sector has come out unscathed from the vagaries of the pandemic. Sales have largely been positive across all segments of the book industry, which includes printed books, eBooks, and audiobooks.
Open internationally.
Entry fee £28, £25 to subscribers to The North
Prize:
Publication by Smith|Doorstop Books; a share of £2,000 cash; a launch reading; publication in the North magazine; book vouchers from Inpress Books
The 2021 International Book & Pamphlet Competition is now open for entries
Judged by Daljit Nagra & Pascale Petit
DEADLINE: last post on Monday 1st March 2021, or midnight on Monday 1st March 2021 for online entrants.
ENTRY FEE: £28, or £25 for North subscribers, Friends of the Poetry Business and members of the Poetry Society. Read more
'People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think.'
‘When I'm putting together a novel, I leave all the doors and windows open so the characters can come in and just as easily leave. I don't take notes. Once I start writing things down, I feel like I'm nailing the story in place. When I rely on my faulty memory, the pieces are free to move. Read more
‘No one reads your book as closely as a translator does, which is something you learn very quickly. I'm in such awe of them. They also read beneath it and around it. They make me consider things I thought I knew the meaning of because I use those words in everyday dialect and that's how the characters express themselves.
In my latest romance novel, How to Catch a Queen, my heroine finally achieves her lifelong dream of becoming a queen following an arranged marriage-only to find herself in a country where the voices of women aren't respected, and queens are powerless. Read more
'I discovered that if I trusted my subconscious, or imagination, whatever you want to call it, and if I made the characters as real and honest as I could, then no matter how complex the pattern being woven, my subconscious would find ways to tie it together - often doing things far more complicated and sophisticated than I could with brute conscious effort. Read more
'I have to know where I'm going'
‘When I'm putting together a novel, I leave all the doors and windows open so the characters can come in and just as easily leave. I don't take notes. Once I start writing things down, I feel like I'm nailing the story in place. When I rely on my faulty memory, the pieces are free to move. Read more