The announcement of the winner of the Man Booker International Prize this week highlights again the growing importance of literary prizes in the international book world. Read more
It's a measure of the growing interest in short stories, amongst both writers and readers, that Costa launched its short story prize in 2012 and that the public is currently invited to read and listen to the shortlisted stories selected from over 1,000 entries on the Costa Book Awards website, and to take part in the public vote. Read more
This year's Booker result raises so many interesting issues that a longer report on Frankfurt, the Book Fair and other issues relating to international publishing will come next week. The links this week give a clue to the many themes that Paul Beatty's win with The Sellout has raised. Read more
Sometimes an author seems to step new-minted into bestsellerdom and, even rarer, literary acclaim. Lisa McInerney is such a writer and her winning of the Bailey Prize earlier in the month, followed by the Desmond Elliott Prize this week, marks a remarkable debut. Read more
Nick Clee asks in this week's Bookbrunch if you need to transcend a prize to win it, inspired by the Costa win by Frances Hardinge's children's book. Read more
This week's story was to have been on the rise in support for short stories, until, that is, Marlon James had his stunning Man Booker Prize win last night. Read more
The longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize is both diverse and international, with a wide range of different kinds of writers and a number of debuts. The longlist features three British writers, five US writers and one each from the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, India, Nigeria and Jamaica. Read more
When John Spurling won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction recently with The Ten Thousand Things it was much more than a good win against a formidable shortlist, which included Martin Amis, Helen Dunmore, Adam Foulds and Kamila Shamsie. Read more
The growth of literary prizes of one kind and another seems unending, although it's a pity from the point of view of unpublished writers that so many of them are restricted to books which have come from traditional publishers. Read more
Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is having an extraordinary impact. Now that it's won the new Bailey Women's Prize (successor to last year's Women's Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize), there seems to be no stopping the author. Read more
‘At their core, cosy crimes are very character-driven stories about unlikely and everyday heroes, and the tone of them is very humorous. The detectives are people who are underestimated - older characters or slightly bumbling eccentrics who make mistakes along the way and get themselves into trouble.
Former Simon & Schuster staffer Filippo Bernardini has said stole more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts because he wanted to read books before they hit stores.
In court papers published on Friday (March 10th), Bernardini apologised for his crime but claimed he did it so he could dive into the stories before they were available to the general public.
Writing and publishing a book about a controversial public figure is like diving into shark-infested waters, says ABC investigative journalist Louise Milligan. She told her Adelaide Writers' Week audience that if she'd written her 2017 award-winning book Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Cardinal Pell today, she wondered if it would even be published. Read more
World Book Day organisers urge focus on reading for pleasure, as National Literacy TrustUK-based organisation which has campaigned since 1993 to improve literacy standards across all age groups. Excellent research information and details of the many initiatives the charity is currently involved in. www.literacytrust.org.uk. It also has a useful page of news stories on UK literacy, which links to newsletter http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx survey reveals decline
Ahead of World Book Day on Thursday 2nd March, the charity by the same name is urging teachers, carers and parents to encourage reading for pleasure as it continues on a sharp decline. Read more
The backlash to Puffin Books' decision to update Roald Dahl's children's books has been swift and largely derisive. The publisher has been accused of "absurd censorship", "corporate safetyism" and "cultural vandalism." Read more
The 60th Bologna Children's Book FairThe Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. kicked off today, drawing 1,456 exhibitors hailing from 90 countries and regions of the world. This is more than in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when there were 1,442 exhibitors. Read more
In the late afternoon of Sunday, September 19, 1819, 23-year-old John Keats struck out for his daily walk from his lodging in Winchester, England. He'd arrived in the city a month prior, leaving behind southern England's Isle of Wight for a change of scenery in the cathedral city of Winchester. Read more
Harriet Muncaster is the bestselling author of the Isadora Moon series and the middle-grade Victoria Stitch series (Oxford Children's Books). Her new book, Emerald and the Ocean Parade, was published on 2 March and introduces Emerald, Isadora's mermaid friend.
Blurb is a funny sounding word. It's phonetically unappealing, beginning and ending with unattractive voiced bilabial stops, and its definition-an advertisement or announcement, especially a laudatory one-carries some of the same meaning as another unattractive word, blubber, which evokes excess in its dual definition as both an expostulation of unrestrained emotion as well as excess fat. Read more
'I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.'