Skip to Content

Success Stories

Success story 2: Janey Jones

Janey Jones and Princess Poppy

Janey Jones has worked hard to achieve her success. Born in Edinburgh, where she still lives, she read English at Edinburgh University and then became a teacher. With her husband she set up the Jelly Club, which has become a successful chain of children’s activity centres in Scotland.  Read more

Success story Russell Ash

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:36pm
Writer's success story 2

To support Potty, Fartwell and Knob, Extraordinary but True Names of British People, which was a UK bestseller in 2007, the author Russell Ash has created some entertaining little gizmos on his admirable website.

  Read more

Success story: Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri is an unusual kind of successful writer. Her precisely observed stories of Bengali immigrant life have been well-received ever since the first collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000.  Read more

Success story Colin Cotterill

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:36pm
Success story: Colin Cotterill

Colin Cotterill has had an interesting kind of life. In 1972 he took a gap year and never came back. He has been a teacher in Australia, a teacher trainer in Vietnam and a social worker on the Burmese border. He has worked on UNESCO literacy projects in Asia, set up an NGO dealing with child prostitution in Thailand and has established a programme to bring books into Laos.  Read more

Success story Brian McGilloway

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:36pm
Success story: Brian McGilloway

Brian McGilloway’s Borderlands has just been published in America. For the veteran of eighteen months of submissions and 20 rejections, this must have been a great moment.  Read more

Success story 6 Heaney and Carle

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:36pm
Success stories: Seamus Heaney and Eric Carle

This week we have not one but two success stories, those of the Nobel Laureate poet Seamus Heaney and the children's writer Eric Carle.  Read more

Success story: Michelle Harrison

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:36pm

Michelle Harrison is our latest success story. The former Waterstone’s bookseller has won this year’s Waterstone’s Children’s Book Award for her debut novel The 13 Treasures. As well as a cash prize of £5,000, she won the continuing support of Waterstone’s 320 branches.  Read more

Success story Evie Wyld

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:35pm
Success story Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld  Read more

Success story Jax Miller

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:35pm
Success story: Jax Miller

Jax MillerThe latest sensational success story is that of Jax Miller, who has just sold two thrillers to HarperFiction UK.  Read more

Success story Hilary Mantel

Thu, 28/07/2016 - 10:35pm
Success story Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel is an intriguing example of an author who has written for many years and only recently achieved a breakthrough. Not only did she win the Booker Prize last autumn, but her book Wolf Hall has become the fastest-selling Booker winner since records began in 1998.  Read more

Syndicate content

Linked items...

7 April 2025 - What's new

April 2025
  • Poets ‘are the great people in literature because they manage to gather thought and feeling, and intellectual and emotional intensity into words in a way that I haven't done in my writing...
  Read more