From Sally Rooney to Raven Leilani, female novelists have captured the literary zeitgeist, with more buzz, prizes and bestsellers than men. But is this cultural shift something to celebrate or rectify?In March, Vintage, one of the UK’s largest literary fiction divisions, announced the five debut novelists it would be championing this year: Megan Nolan, Pip Williams, Ailsa McFarlane, Jo Hamya and Vera Kurian.All five of them are women. But you could be forgiven for not noticing it, so commonplace are female-dominated lists in 2021. Over the past 12 months, almost all of the buzz in fiction has been around young women: Patricia Lockwood, Yaa Gyasi, Raven Leilani, Avni Doshi, Lauren Oyler. Ask a novelist of any gender who they are reading and they will almost certainly mention one of Rachel Cusk, Ottessa Moshfegh, Rachel Kushner, Gwendoline Riley, Monique Roffey or Maria Stepanova. Or they will be finding new resonances in Anita Brookner, Zora Neale Hurston, Natalia Ginzburg, Octavia Butler, Ivy Compton-Burnett. The energy, as anyone in the publishing world will tell you, is with women.It’s only relatively recently that fiction written by a woman about intimate subjects like sex has been classed as literary fictionClass is the dirty secret of publishing. Working-class male writers are now expected to answer for a past that isn’t oursMen think that to be allowed a place at the table, they need to have the right views and be these nice guysWhy wasn’t there uproar in the media... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-05-16 06:00:48 UTC ]
Sci-fi anthology stalled since 1974 will be produced by executor, screenwriter J Michael Straczynski, adding stories by today’s big-name SF writersIt is the great white whale of science fiction: an anthology of stories by some of the genre’s greatest names, collected in the early 1970s by Harlan... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-11-16 14:38:59 UTC ]
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Following its its success in the US, the ethical platform Bookshop.org has arrived in the UK, marking an exciting new chapter for independent stores onlineIn publishing we often talk about things that we are “excited” and “delighted” about, so much that sometimes I think the words have lost... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-11-05 08:00:40 UTC ]
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Colm Tóibín gives the third installment to the Words Ireland Lecture Series. This modern master discusses the craft of James Joyce—and the idea of craft itself. Is craft a concept more suited to poetry? Could strict ideas around craft actually be a hindrance to novelists and short story writers?... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-04 09:48:28 UTC ]
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Fred Klein, who helped make Bantam Books a major force in mass market paperback publishing in the 1960s and 1970s, died on October 22. He was described by a former colleague as "the greatest ringmaster the publishing world has ever known.” Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-11-02 05:00:00 UTC ]
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AS AN EXPRESSIVE MEDIUM, video games have a strange way of reducing central concepts of modernist art and theory to basic operational elements. The technical specifications of “point of view” that have preoccupied novelists since the turn of the 20th century are crudely literalized within game... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-31 17:00:02 UTC ]
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Yes, it’s Kristin Scott Thomas, our most recent Mrs. Danvers and our forever Fiona. Can’t you just imagine her as the narrator of Cusk’s cool-toned autofictions? The best part is, she got the gig because she’s a fan. “Faber heard that I was a Rachel Cusk fan so I was thrilled when they asked me... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-10-29 15:18:37 UTC ]
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Faber is to release new unabridged audio editions of Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy, which will be narrated by actor Kristin Scott Thomas. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-29 07:17:24 UTC ]
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Writers Rachel Howzell Hall, Attica Locke and Ivy Pochoda talked with Times reporter James Queally for a 2020 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books event. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-10-24 16:06:42 UTC ]
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LET’S DISPENSE WITH the small surprises up front. The latest outing from Smith Henderson, acclaimed author of what others might call literary fiction — his award-winning 2014 debut, Fourth of July Creek — is indeed a thriller. And it’s not a solo endeavor — he’s teamed up with a friend, Jon Marc... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-11 12:30:47 UTC ]
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Bi and lesbian books from the last two decades for fans of literary fiction, from haunting collections to atmospheric historical fiction like Miss Timmins’ School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-10-02 10:38:36 UTC ]
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Scribner is to publish The Decameron Project, an anthology of 29 stories about a modern plague, written by authors including Margaret Atwood, Andrew O’Hagan, Colm Tóibín, Kamila Shamsie, Rachel Kushner and David Mitchell. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-02 08:28:47 UTC ]
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With no room for Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her Wolf Hall trilogy, the six finalists also include four debutsHilary Mantel will not win a third Booker prize with the final novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, after American writers made a near clean sweep of this year’s shortlist.With four... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-09-15 12:21:07 UTC ]
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Diane Cook, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Avni Doshi, Maaza Mengiste, Douglas Stuart and Brandon Taylor have been shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, in a selection packed with independent presses but featuring the notable absence of two-time winner Hilary Mantel. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-15 08:26:08 UTC ]
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Why aren’t there more Science Fiction Black writers? There aren’t because there aren’t. What we don’t see, we assume can’t be. What a destructive assumption. —Octavia E. Butler, in Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories. A small good thing amid the unrelenting horror: This week, almost fifty... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-09-03 16:37:21 UTC ]
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Bolinda has scooped a “laugh out loud” romantic comedy by debut author Aly Mennuti, featuring a literary agent based partly on the author's own, Simon Trewin. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-08-25 02:20:12 UTC ]
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“There isn’t much literary fiction that deals with evangelicalism. ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain,’ by James Baldwin, was the first book I read that spoke to that part of my life and it moved me so deeply to see faith rendered on the page with such care and brilliance.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-08-20 09:00:04 UTC ]
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Ah, yes, the good old days: when novelists lent their faces and testimonials to advertisers hoping to sell tires, or a certain kind of beer, or fancy watches. It’s something you don’t see very much anymore, because we writers have become too principled to participate in advertising campaigns.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-08-19 17:14:06 UTC ]
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Chris Bohjalian, Mary Kay Andrews and other novelists have turned to Zoom and Facebook Live to find their audience. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-08-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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From 'islands of pain' to the 'peril of exposure,' writers have captured the fear, emptiness and despair that characterize life during the current pandemic, writes a poet and English scholar. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2020-08-17 12:24:39 UTC ]
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Novelists including Candice Carty-Williams, Beth O'Leary and Jeanette Winterson are in the running for the Comedy Women in Print Prize (CWIP). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-08-16 13:06:20 UTC ]
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