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 ]
Back in April, A24 and Rhombus Media optioned the rights to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning debut novel about a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who serves as a communist double agent after the fall of Saigon. The novel is being adapted into a limited... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-07-16 15:33:34 UTC ]
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The illustrated debut novel 'Orphans of the Tide' wins the 2021 Branford Boase Award, which honors both authors and their editors. The post Struan Murray, Ben Horslen Win the UK’s Branford Boase Award appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2021-07-15 20:44:40 UTC ]
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"The notion of 'a book' is just a convenient fiction which we books go along with because it serves the needs of the bean counters in publishing, not to mention the ego of the writers. But the reality is far more complex.” So explains “the Book”, one of the narrators of Ruth Ozeki’s fourth novel... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-07-09 19:27:08 UTC ]
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Carolyn Ferrell’s beautifully hair-raising debut novel takes readers into a house of horrors where some survivors have a better chance than others. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-07-07 09:00:03 UTC ]
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The author was repeatedly told that no one wanted to read fun books with disabled heroes. Now she has won the £5,000 Waterstones children’s book prize for her debut, A Kind of SparkWhen Scottish author Elle McNicoll was first trying to enter the publishing world, she was repeatedly told that... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-07-01 05:01:05 UTC ]
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St. Martin’s buys a debut novel by a Bloomsbury UK assistant editor, a pair of podcasters sells a book on race to Park Row, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-06-25 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, Soyinka is coming out with his first novel in almost 50 years, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. The post Fifty Years Later, a New Novel Emerges appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2021-06-24 09:59:45 UTC ]
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Publishing a debut novel is never easy. 100,000 long-form works of English-language fiction are published every year and even in normal circumstances it’s a struggle to for a first-time novelist to stand out from the pack. But the last 15 or so months have been particularly trying. Full lockdown... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-12 22:02:54 UTC ]
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The author of a debut novel about diversity in the workplace on how black people act around white people, embracing her hair, and what’s changed a year after George Floyd’s murderZakiya Dalila Harris was born and raised in Connecticut and is currently based in Brooklyn. Now a full-time writer,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-06-05 17:00:15 UTC ]
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'Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch,' historical fiction about Kepler's mother, is Galchen's first novel since 2008's 'Atmospheric Disturbances.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-06-03 14:00:33 UTC ]
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HarperCollins Ireland has pre-empted a debut novel by award-winning actor and playwright Emmet Kirwan, to be published in 2023. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-05-28 22:53:36 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer in the TV adaptation of A Discovery of Witches (2018) / IMDB Deborah Harkness’s All Souls trilogy has taken a new life through the Sundance dramatic series, A Discovery of Witches. The novels... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-05-27 13:42:23 UTC ]
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Lisa Taddeo, whose book "Three Women" broke the mold of immersive journalism, talks about her first novel, "Animal," and the struggle to write and live. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-05-27 13:00:06 UTC ]
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Zakiya Dalila Harris, a former editorial assistant, is making a splash with “The Other Black Girl,” her debut novel about an African-American woman navigating a nearly all-white workplace. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-05-23 20:21:45 UTC ]
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Shola von Reinhold wins the award for small publishing houses with their novel LOTE, but financial reward split among 10 publishersThe Scottish author Shola von Reinhold has won the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses for their “dazzling” queer debut novel LOTE. But the £20,000... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-05-19 12:17:35 UTC ]
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In Christine Smallwood’s debut novel The Life of the Mind, protagonist Dorothy escapes the stifled environment of an academic conference for one she finds even more depressing: the slot machines. There, she runs into her former dissertation advisor, Judith, a woman who caused her significant... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-05-06 11:00:00 UTC ]
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TJ Newman dreamt up her terror-in-the-skies novel Falling while guarding the cockpit as the pilots took a toilet break. She reveals how she kept going through furlough and 41 rejectionsFlight attendant Torri Newman was working on the red-eye flight from Los Angeles to New York when the idea for... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-05-04 05:00:21 UTC ]
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"Second Place," Rachel Cusk's first novel after the radical, brilliant "Outline" trilogy, follows a forceful woman who's had enough of difficult men. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-04-28 14:00:33 UTC ]
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Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the US cover for Wole Soyinka’s new novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, which will be published on September 28 by Pantheon Books. This will be Soyinka’s first novel to be published in 48 years, and also the first since he won the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-04-23 13:30:34 UTC ]
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Pamela Dorman buys a debut novel by a longtime Knopf editor, Holt signs a memoir by Ronnie Spector, Hanya Yanagihara re-ups with Doubleday, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-04-16 04:00:00 UTC ]
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