He starred in Peep Show, Green Wing and Wonka – and his first novel won an award. Now the star is making operas with 64 homeless people. Not bad going for someone who was written off by his teachersPaterson Joseph is, by his own admission, an unlikely opera librettist. He had turned 50 by the time he got round to going to one, and only went because he was in it, as the “crazy” voice of God in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. “It’s not my world,” says the actor. But therein lies part of his mission: as a black Londoner written off by the school system, his life was transformed by the goldmine he discovered while truanting down at his local library.One of his discoveries, as “a melancholy teen”, was Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin. “I remember getting it out of the library,” he says, “just because it was a small book. And I started reading this poem out loud, at night in my bedroom. And I laughed – but I was also frightened and frustrated, weeping at the tragedy of it. When I closed the book, it was dawn.” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-27 04:00:13 UTC ]
Last year not only marked the twentieth publication anniversary of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, it also saw the release of his first novel in seven years, Crossroads. So it was only fitting that Picador would embark on a redesign of the author’s backlist. We spoke with Alex Merto, the art... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 08:54:52 UTC ]
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Lee Cole’s first novel is not only the story of a young man finding his vocation as a writer but also a wrenching examination of class differences Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-03-14 11:00:51 UTC ]
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Dolly Parton has written her first novel with the help of best-selling author James Patterson. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2022-03-10 00:01:14 UTC ]
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Lit Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Laura Warrell’s debut novel Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, which will be published by Pantheon in fall 2022. Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm follows Circus Palmer, a forty-year-old Boston-based trumpet player and old-school ladies’ man, who lives for his music... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-03 15:00:48 UTC ]
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The lives of queer Arab-Australian boys and men are vividly inhabited in award-winning poet Omar Sakr’s darkly comic debut novel, set in Western Sydney. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2022-02-28 19:12:38 UTC ]
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Photo credit: Nigel DaviesSunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award marks the 30th anniversary with one of it's most decorated shortlists to date:• Irish novelist Megan Nolan for her darkly funny debut novel Acts of Desperation;• US-based writer Anna Beecher for her novel... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2022-02-16 14:40:41 UTC ]
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After previous seminars showcased work from Scotland and Wales, this year the focus is on writing from Northern Ireland. Chaired by novelist and non-fiction writer Glenn Patterson, director at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast – a familiar and popular name for British... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2022-02-16 12:14:57 UTC ]
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Canadian author Nita Prose's debut novel The Maid became a New York Times and Canadian bestseller just a few weeks after its release on January 4. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2022-02-16 09:00:00 UTC ]
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'Moon Witch, Spider King,' the second in Marlon James' incantatory Dark Star trilogy, flips the script on his first novel to tell a woman's side. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-02-15 14:00:10 UTC ]
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The memoirist Sarah Manguso’s first novel is about a young girl’s life in a small, snowy New England town. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-02-06 10:00:06 UTC ]
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Coco Mellors' 'Cleopatra and Frankenstein' evokes a rich universe in multiple senses, but it feels engineered for a Netflix adaptation. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-02-04 14:00:54 UTC ]
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At the risk of reigniting the Sally Rooney Discourse—today, Hulu and BBC Three released a few early images from their upcoming adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestselling first novel Conversations With Friends, which will premiere sometime this spring. (If you somehow don’t know what this novel is... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-04 13:53:52 UTC ]
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Early in Julia May Jonas’s searing debut novel Vladimir, the unnamed narrator, an “oldish white woman in her late fifties (the identity I am burdened with publicly presenting, to my general embarrassment)” finds herself in the last place anyone wants to be—a faculty meeting of a small New... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-02 09:50:43 UTC ]
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Julia May Jonas' "Vladimir" is a thrilling "Lolita" update in which the deliciously wicked narrator is not the male abuser but his wife. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-02-01 14:00:41 UTC ]
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Brendan Slocumb’s debut novel is a musical bildungsroman cleverly contained within a literary thriller. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-02-01 10:00:07 UTC ]
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I have always held a keen interest toward the processes of myth formation and how beliefs about family identity are handed down through generations. My debut novel Defenestrate tells the story of a family in the midst of reckoning with superstition and inheritance, the long-held beliefs that can... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-01-31 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Europa Editions UK has acquired Esther Yi's "incredible" debut novel Y/N in a two book pre-empt. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-19 12:54:14 UTC ]
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Andrew Lipstein’s entertaining debut novel mines comedy from an aspiring author’s ethically questionable path to publication. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-01-19 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Atlantic Books has acquired Camilla Grudova's Children of Paradise, a "stunning" debut novel exploring the lives of cinema workers and sex. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-19 06:20:25 UTC ]
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