For many, staying indoors is an unsettling experience. It’s been heartening to see the imaginative leaps being taken by many organisations and artists to help us through – sitting-room gigs, free theatre streams, virtual tours of museums and archives and galleries – but given the limitless choice of the internet, sometimes it’s hard to find your way around.Tonight, for example, you’re meant to be watching the ballet with one friend, seeing a play with another, while a third FaceTimes you so you can cook a new recipe together. You’ll almost wish it was a regular weekend again; one where you lie face-down on the floor, accuse your partner of something you know they didn’t do, and complain about how you’ve spent all day staring at a screen.So now, in these overwhelming, overloaded times, it’s the perfect opportunity for the British Council Literature team to launch our new blog series, Literature on Lockdown. For while books have never been the flashiest art form, book people are experts in the art of being alone. We know better than almost anyone how one person can find an intense connection, an exciting new idea, or a more vibrant world than the one outside their window, by quietly spending time with the work of another.The British Council Literature blog will offer you a path through the wealth of corona-content, presenting an overview of the different ways the literature community – in the UK and internationally – is continuing: how they are fostering relationships... Continue reading at 'British Council global'
[ British Council global | 2020-04-06 11:36:00 UTC ]
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It may come as a surprise, but when I heard about the lockdown, the anxiety that the world seemed to be feeling did not grip me. I never felt worried or confined by the limitations placed on us. For introvert like me, it felt like a long weekend with the same cycle of activities consisting of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-17 05:58:38 UTC ]
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Arts Council England has revealed its emergency response funding breakdown, with a £2,463,882 grant to the successful individuals and organisations that applied from the literature discipline. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-15 18:27:48 UTC ]
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Invisibility is part and parcel of being a ghostwriter. But somehow I’ve felt it more acutely during lockdown. In normal times, on publication of a book I’ve ghosted, there’s the launch party to which I am invited as ‘part’ of the publishing team, or a place around the table at the celebratory... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-14 18:28:32 UTC ]
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Traditionally, a ballad was a song that was designed to be danced to, as the etymology of the word, Provençal balada meaning ‘dance, song to dance to’, ultimately from late Latin ballare. The great British ballads – and we say ‘British’ because many of them were Scottish rather than English... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-06-14 14:00:45 UTC ]
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It was Sunday 22nd March when I emailed Carrie, my literary agent, telling her I’d had an idea in the bath and although it felt far-fetched, I wanted to explore it and could she please call me on Monday for a quick chat. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-12 11:19:54 UTC ]
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At some point or another most apprentices will have suffered from an inferiority complex. Caught in a no man’s land between employed and yet not fully employed, we occupy a precarious position. So when the coronavirus pandemic hit home, quite literally, you can imagine how that voice which... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-10 23:02:05 UTC ]
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A collection of six essays written during lockdown by Zadie Smith, titled Intimations, will be published by Hamish Hamilton this summer. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-10 18:45:56 UTC ]
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I ordered a Zippy Shell storage unit and prepared to say goodbye. It wasn’t easy. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-06-10 05:30:31 UTC ]
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Penguin Random House Audio is bringing together wellbeing experts, including fitness author Chloe Madeley and performance coach Sara Milne Rowe, in a new audio anthology, The Here and Now. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-09 10:56:54 UTC ]
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If you’d asked me how I was coping a month ago, the truth would have been not so well actually. I let the anxiety that so many of us have been feeling overwhelm me, and I was tired of all the Zoom. SO TIRED. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-03 17:53:34 UTC ]
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I have a clear memory of the day that Covid-19 became a reality to me. My daughter, Matilda, was five months old, and Katie Espiner, MD of Orion, had just told me two things: that Hachette were planning to trial a full company work from home day, and that Italian book sales had dropped... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-31 18:59:04 UTC ]
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How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I don’t read poetry. I just don’t get it.’ Or perhaps, ‘Why can’t poets just come out and say what they want to say? Why say something in such a way?’ For many people, poetry is ‘difficult’. But whilst it’s true that […] The post 10 of the Most... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-30 14:00:36 UTC ]
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Agents are often described as friends and therapists as well as a tough negotiators. The former really came into its own when COVID-19 hit. We work solely for our clients; we are the somewhat invisible middlemen (or women) whose role it is to put our authors’ needs first. But a global pandemic... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-28 12:50:32 UTC ]
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Sunny Singh, the co-founder of the Jhalak Prize, has said lockdown caused by the pandemic is an opportunity to reassess equality in the industry. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-27 11:18:23 UTC ]
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I was in Paris when Covid-19 became a reality. It was the weekend of 21st February and I was there for a quick family reunion: my older brother was in the French capital on a work trip, my parents had taken a train from our hometown of Turin, Italy, and I had joined them from London on the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-26 17:57:13 UTC ]
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The Harry Potter author said her new fairy tale would go online in installments, starting Tuesday, and published as a book in November. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-05-26 14:47:26 UTC ]
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I was in Paris when Covid-19 became a reality. It was the weekend of 21st February and I was there for a quick family reunion: my older brother was in the French capital on a work trip, my parents had taken a train from our hometown of Turin, Italy, and I had joined them from London on the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-26 04:20:12 UTC ]
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Italy, the first Western country to be ravaged by coronavirus, has further eased its two-month-long lockdown, allowing everything from museums and libraries to sit-down dining and hairdressers to reopen leaving businesses to grapple with radical... Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2020-05-25 08:00:00 UTC ]
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Print sales for the UK’s biggest national newspapers slumped by as much as 39% last month, as the coronavirus lockdown Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2020-05-22 22:41:14 UTC ]
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One evening a week or so ago, I was speaking to a friend in another publishing company, sitting at the kitchen table, glass of wine in hand, in today’s sad Zoom substitute for meeting up for a post-work drink. She referred obliquely to the famous WW1 recruitment poster, the one with the little... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-22 09:54:33 UTC ]
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