Novelist Kate Atkinson: ‘I do feel a need to prove myself’

As her latest Jackson Brodie thriller comes out, the award-winning author discusses cosy crime, sniffy critics, and how she investigated her own family’s secretsKate Atkinson has an idea for a fun side-hustle: at some point in the future, when she’s done with the second world war, and with her jaded private eye, Jackson Brodie, she’ll bring to life the creative projects that have hitherto existed only as facets of her characters’ lives. She’ll take the fortune teller Madame Astarti from her third novel, Emotionally Weird, and put her at the centre of her own series of mysteries; she’ll conjure up a script for Green Acres, the rural soap opera that features in her two short-story collections, 2002’s Not the End of the World and last year’s Normal Rules Don’t Apply; she’ll craft episodes of the TV police procedural Collier, in which Brodie’s one-time girlfriend Julia played a pathologist. And finally, she’ll flesh out the breathtakingly hammy murder mystery that a cast of clapped-out actors perform at Burton Makepeace, the stately home that is the setting for her new Jackson Brodie novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook.Writing these scenes – teeming with aristocrats, actors, Russian countesses, clergymen and a “fastidious little Swiss detective” – were Atkinson’s treat, she tells me, as she constructed the novel during lockdown. “I would have done so much more of that,” she explains, as we sit sipping coffee in a studiedly antiquated hotel near her home in Edinburgh. “But I... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2024-08-10 08:00:37 UTC ]

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From our archives: A 1981 interview with Toni Morrison

The award-winning author Toni Morrison died Aug. 5, 2019. We're reposting this 1981 interview conducted shortly after her fourth novel, "Tar Baby," was published. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2019-08-07 16:16:00 UTC ]
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From our archives: A 1981 interview with Toni Morrison

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2019-08-07 16:16:00 UTC ]
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From our archives: A 1981 interview with Toni Morrison

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2019-08-07 16:16:00 UTC ]
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Toni Morrison, Award-Winning Author of Beloved and More, Dead at 88

Morrison's accolades included a Pulitzer, a Nobel Prize in literature, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2019-08-06 14:40:16 UTC ]
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Pablo Cartaya on Heading to the Heart of Controversy, and More

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[ Literrary Hub | 2019-07-26 08:46:36 UTC ]
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Egmont signs LGBTQ romantic comedy from CWIP winner Steven

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[ The Bookseller | 2019-07-14 16:29:46 UTC ]
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'Black Panther' director Ryan Coogler will join Ta-Nehisi Coates at his L.A. book tour stop

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‘Black Panther’ director Ryan Coogler will join Ta-Nehisi Coates at his L.A. book tour stop

National Book Award-winning author Ta-Nehisi Coates will bring his new book tour to Los Angeles in October, where he'll be joined by a special guest: "Black Panther" director Ryan Coogler. Coates is scheduled to discuss his forthcoming novel, "The Water Dancer," with Coogler at the West... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-07-10 00:15:00 UTC ]
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How Einstein’s science defied nationalism and crossed borders

Matthew Stanley describes an international effort during World War I to support his most famous theory. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2019-06-20 18:39:41 UTC ]
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Read Sci-Fi Author Elizabeth Bear’s New Short Story About Panic in Space

Read a brand-new story from the award-winning author of Karen Memory, Ancestral Night, and The Red-Stained Wings. Continue reading at Slate

[ Slate | 2019-05-25 11:00:08 UTC ]
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France’s Prix Monte-Cristo’s Inmate Jury Awards Its First Honor

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[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-05-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Imperial War Museums launch Wartime Classics series

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[ The Bookseller | 2019-03-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury pre-empts Binder's family-inspired Second World War novel

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[ The Bookseller | 2019-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Raymond Briggs's final book, which faces death 'head-on', due this year

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[ The Guardian | 2019-02-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Lecturer wins Richard and Judy ‘Search for a Bestseller’ competition

University lecturer Claire Gradidge has won the Richard and Judy ‘Search for a Bestseller’ competition for her World War Two crime novel The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-02-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Costa Book of the Year: Jewish rescue story The Cut Out Girl wins

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[ BBC News | 2019-01-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Lucy Strange | 'I think it’s so important not to underestimate readers of that age, the complexity of their inner world'

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[ The Bookseller | 2018-12-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Playwright Alan Pollock pens picture book about WW2 bear

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[ The Bookseller | 2018-09-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Kate Atkinson | 'I just could not write absolutely, completely seriously'

Set against the backdrop of the Second World War, the bestelling novelist’s latest work grapples with the elusive nature of ‘truth’. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2018-08-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Orion to publish Italian tale of love and war inspired by true events

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[ The Bookseller | 2018-07-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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