Writers' stories

When I started writing my current novel, Paris Never Leaves You, I had no idea the protagonist, a young widow struggling to survive in Occupied Paris, would end up working in a New York publishing house. I knew she would get to America, but I assumed she would enter the fashion or beauty business as had many of the émigrés I'd known or read about who fled Europe after World War II.  Read more

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

It's not that I think you can't be a writer if you don't write every day. It's that I know I can't be a writer if I don't make myself write every day. There are apparently people out there who can write a few days a week, or even a few days a month, and have that result in a book. I envy those people, and if you're one of them, I wish I could be you.

For any author, being able to describe yourself as a bona fide bestseller is key to conferring your career with a certain gravitas - and will often bring you even more sales. In the UK, while most book charts are tallied by Nielsen BookScan, the Sunday Times bestseller list - like the New York Times chart in the US - has become the gold standard.  Read more

"You can really write anywhere, you know." So my non-writer friends love to say, usually as they attempt to convince me to accompany them to places I do not wish to travel to, or to move me out of their holiday homes.  Read more