Novelist Eleanor Catton and her editor Max Porter's alliance shows how much more than wielding a blade goes into this relationshipHenry James called editing "the butchers' trade". But he also said, "I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort," so you can see how the old anglophile and his editors may have crossed horns.However, if we're honest, wouldn't we, the reader, prefer to chew over a well-honed slice of literature than wade through fatty hunks of unedited, flabby prose? Isn't the editor's first loyalty to the reader, and not the author? Isn't it better to wield the knife than to club out something that the cow might approve of?This weekend, as part of the New Zealand festival, The Luminaries author and winner of the Man Booker prize, Eleanor Catton, discussed deletion, deadlines and several other facets of the writer-editor relationship with her British editor Max Porter. If this sounds a little like sitting down with your ex-husband to publicly discuss why he always disliked your sense of humour, then think again; the modern editor is, according to Porter, "part proofreader, part therapist, part in-house champion and, increasingly, there to put a marketisation on the written word." This was less meat cleavers at dawn, more gentle emails about getting off Twitter.With 391,000 books being self-published in the US in 2012 alone, the old 20th-century model of the creative editor is, according to Porter, "an endangered species". While Porter described his... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon-owned online audiobook and podcast service Audible is laying off about 5% of its workforce Continue reading at ABC News
[ ABC News | 2024-01-11 22:47:05 UTC ]
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The former editorial director of Bantam and Ballantine and founder of Villard Books at Random House and an eponymous imprint at Houghton Mifflin, whose long and storied career in trade book publishing lasted into his final hours, died on December 31. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-11 05:00:00 UTC ]
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In their lifetimes, these authors’ work went largely unappreciated. These books honor their literary legacies. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-01-04 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Novelists in Brooklyn draw inspiration from the New York borough’s cast of thousands, and particularly from its idiosyncratic neighborhoods. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2023-12-21 19:46:00 UTC ]
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A debut author who used fake accounts to “review bomb” other writers on the influential online platform Goodreads has been dropped by her agent and had her book deal cancelled Continue reading at ABC News
[ ABC News | 2023-12-13 02:46:01 UTC ]
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British author A.S. Byatt, who was known for award-winning works including 'Possession' and 'The Children's Book,' has died. She was 87. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-11-17 17:18:21 UTC ]
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Amid ongoing challenges, Black authors and editors are creating the love stories they want to read. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Writer and editor Zeke Caligiuri joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion, a new collection of essays on class he co-edited along with eleven other incarcerated writers. The volume’s contributors include Eula Biss, Kao Kalia... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-11-16 09:08:02 UTC ]
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12 Books for Tolerance and Understanding (2023), by The Editors of WLT Lit Lists [email protected] Tue, 11/14/2023 - 14:07 For years, a prognostication by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe appeared on the masthead page of World Literature Today: “These... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2023-11-14 20:07:42 UTC ]
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Libraries are sacred space within the unending, unrelenting madness, the profane that is Society, places where the predominant ideology is to inform. The Library of Alexandria was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; the Library of Congress is a wonderfully ( dis )organized... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-11-14 09:35:32 UTC ]
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The award-winning Irish author on losing his father at 18, the drawbacks of English editors and the theme of imprisonment in his workMike McCormack was born in London in 1965 and raised on a farm in County Mayo in the west of Ireland. He published his first story collection, Getting It in the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-11-11 18:00:01 UTC ]
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The bestselling author of The Power talks about her new techno-thriller, coping with grief and finding hope in the darkest of storiesNaomi Alderman, author of the bestselling novel The Power, is just getting over Covid and feeling a bit wiped out. “But don’t worry, I still seem able to talk for... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-11-04 09:00:34 UTC ]
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History books she shepherded over 44 years at Alfred A. Knopf won a raft of Pulitzers — seven in all — as well as Bancrofts, though one recipient set off a furious academic debate. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-11-03 21:36:32 UTC ]
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When she was in high school in the early 1950’s, Joanna Russ (1930–2011) read Mark Twain’s short story “A Medieval Romance,” about a duke without a male heir who brings his daughter up to fill the role, hiding her gender from all. Things get complicated when the duke’s niece falls in love with... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-11-03 08:41:28 UTC ]
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His tiny California newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for its exposé of Synanon, a renowned drug rehabilitation program that had turned into a violent operation. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-11-01 21:32:07 UTC ]
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Novelist, poet, and educator Heba Abu Nada, a beloved figure in the Palestinian literary community and the author of Oxygen is Not for the Dead, was killed in her home south of Gaza City by an Israeli airstrike on Friday. She was thirty-two years old. In her final tweet, written in Arabic on... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-10-24 15:54:33 UTC ]
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It would make sense that any history would begin at Stillwater Prison, where so much of the story and mythology of prison in Minnesota also begins. It is where Cole Younger of the famous James-Younger gang did their time, and where they spent their own money to start the Prison Mirror, the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-16 11:00:00 UTC ]
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An author explains how these two qualities are key to her literary success—and how they can help other writers sustain long and fruitful careers. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-10-13 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Former Washington Post editor Martin Baron joins the L.A. Times Book Club Oct. 11 to discuss "Collision of Power," his book about Trump, Bezos and the future of journalism. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-10-02 13:00:31 UTC ]
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Lydia Davis’ new collection Our Strangers, is available now from Bookshop Editions, so we asked her a few questions about her writing, reading, and more. How do you tackle writer’s block? I don’t really have writer’s block anymore. When I first started out, I certainly did just sit there... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-10-02 09:00:46 UTC ]
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