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Writing

Focus on poetry

19 June 2017

Tracy K Smith has been named US Poet Laureate and in the UK National Writing Day has brought a focus on poetry, with two new articles available from the Poetry School.  Read more

Literary magazines - response time and the cost of submission

17 April 2017

In a week when we're glad to publish Sandeep Khan Mishra's list of 36 magazines which reply within a week, it's also fair to consider the question of how much writers have to pay to make submissions, especially when so many of them are rejected.  Read more

'A major literary figure of the next generation'

27 June 2016

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

Making short stories controversial

16 November 2015

The fuss that's been sparked off by the recent publication of Philip Henscher's selection of short Stories in The Penguin Book of the British Short Story suggests that short stories may be achieving more traction and visibility than they did even a few years ago.  Read more

Open submission - a fad or an opportunity?

23 February 2015

Are things changing in terms of publishers accepting submissions or is the latest fashion for ‘open submissions' just a fashion? Big publishers abandoned what was rudely called ‘the slush pile' some years ago, so why are some imprints now having open submission periods, mostly of only two weeks or so?  Read more

Big deal for ghost-written books

17 December 2012

 The recent news of a £15m (over $24m) deal between Wilbur Smith and HarperCollins worldwide, a new publisher for the author, has caused some controversy this week. The deal is for six books but the Sunday Times claimed that Smith will not write them himself.  Read more

Rowling grabs the headlines

2 October 2012

 It almost seems as if the only thing which has happened this last week is that J K Rowling has published her first adult novel. There's been no escaping the coverage gleaned by the media from a generally unreachable author.   Read more

Should authors get a minimum wage?

10 September 2012

At the 2012 Edinburgh World Writers conference, the author China Mieville suggested that one way of safeguarding the future of writing might be a minimum wage for authors: "For the great majority of people who write, it would mean an improvement in their situation, an ability to write full-time. For a few it would mean an income cut, but you know what?  Read more

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'Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.'

— Neil Gaiman

'Poetry is definitely having a renaissance'

22 February 2021

‘Poetry is definitely having a renaissance.There's been a real sea-change in terms of how it's seen, especially in lockdown. Poetry is the perfectly transportable art form. Owning a book is all you need to experience it. Poetry doesn't necessarily give us the answers, but it does give us the tools to think with and helps us process issues.  Read more

8 February 2021 - What's new

February 2021
  • 'It is all for the taking. All the manuals by frustrated fictioneers on how to write can't give you the first syllable of reality, at any cost, that any common conversation can.
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