Drawing on her panoramic reading and her experiences of the authorly life cycle, Atwood surveys her trade with a mix of seriousness and gentle fun“You may find the subject a little peculiar,” warns Margaret Atwood, before she discusses the writer’s relationship with mortality. “It is a little peculiar. Writing itself is a little peculiar.” Atwood’s survey of her profession makes this seem like an understatement: after all, she argues, writers have been placed in close company with the devil and the dead; they have secret identities and hidden doubles; they are death-defying magicians, self-erasing nobodies, even – if you want to get “murky and pretentious” – shamanistic travellers. This book prefers to stay on the side of clarity and self-deprecation, combining evidence drawn from her panoramic reading – one chapter deals with The Tempest, The Wizard of Oz and Klaus Mann’s Mephisto – with her own experiences of the life cycle of an author. She tempers the seriousness of her questions – What is a writer? For whom do writers write? – by poking gentle fun at her trade, describing the machine-like publishing industry as “cog eat cog”, and quietly mocking endless discussion panels. Yet Atwood sees her kind reflected everywhere – from Gilgamesh to The Beast With Five Fingers – and works hard on their behalf: advocate, analyst and always, writer.•To order On Writers and Writing for £7.99 (RRP £9.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2015-01-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
Frontline booksellers are the first people customers see when they set foot in bookstores across America, and are among the most vulnerable workers in the publishing industry. This is what their world looks like now. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-06-05 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Taylor Hickney In this profile, one of Marie-Helene Bertino’s students at the New School provides a personal glimpse of the author, whose new novel, Parakeet, was published June 2. On the evening of the National Book Awards,... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-04 19:40:55 UTC ]
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Asking consumers to remember what booksellers mean to them, Spain's publishing industry associations roll out a campaign to reopen book retailers. The post Coronavirus Response: Spain’s Publishing Industry Mobilizes Bookstore Support appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-06-04 13:07:04 UTC ]
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Pandemic Dispatches Elena Poniatowska In this column that originally appeared in La Jornada, Elena Poniatowska considers the role of editors and talks with Diego Rabasa, founder of publisher Sexto Piso. Already precarious, the pandemic lockdown has made... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-03 21:05:48 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Elena Poniatowska In this column that originally appeared in La Jornada, Elena Poniatowska considers the role of editors and talks with Diego Rabasa, founder of publisher Sexto Piso. Already precarious, the pandemic lockdown has... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-03 21:05:48 UTC ]
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Today sees the launch of South Asian LitFest, a free, live online festival I've created to show celebrate and showcase authors both from the subcontinent and the diasporic South Asian writing community around the world. Why do we need it? Well, even as the publishing industry talks about... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-27 22:25:54 UTC ]
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Having dropped up to 2.5 million units in its worst 'acute COVID period' week, Kristin McLean says the US publishing industry needs to assess, predict, and harden weak spots for challenges ahead. The post NPD’s Kristen McLean on the US Industry: Weathering the Pandemic appeared first on... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-05-27 12:33:49 UTC ]
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Recently, a colleague experienced an irksome response from a coworker when she could not meet with him at short notice. She felt frustrated that he seemed to show little compassion or understanding when she’s currently balancing a full-time job and homeschooling two young children. She’s not... Continue reading at Publishing Executive
[ Publishing Executive | 2020-05-27 12:00:06 UTC ]
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The Amazon Literary Partnership has announced $1 million in grant funding to 66 organizations across the publishing industry. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-27 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The Covid-19 pandemic has brought huge swaths of the publishing industry to a halt, but one channel remains open and thriving: mobile webcomics. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-22 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Many months ago, when we all sat in our meeting rooms, sipping coffee and bouncing campaign ideas around, I don’t think any one of us marketing folk could have predicted just how much our plans would be forced to change. The effects of the national lockdown on marketing campaigns and the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-20 21:41:29 UTC ]
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Interviews Veronica Esposito Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim grant, and a Fulbright... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-05-18 18:20:27 UTC ]
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Offering what they call their ‘360-degree view of the potential as well as the shortcomings of the publishing industry,’ Italy’s literary agents are organizing during the ‘critical situation’ imposed by COVID-19. By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson ‘For a New Start After the... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-05-11 03:29:40 UTC ]
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April 2020 found the publishing industry entering a period of unexpected change as bookshops closed and the focus turned to digital sales. The COVID-19 lockdown has forced writers to re-evaluate the future in this difficult time. As a narrative psychologist and fiction writer, I am interested... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-05 04:49:45 UTC ]
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Publishing industry sales rose 3.5% in the first two months of 2020 over the same period in 2019, according to data supplied to the AAP by 1,361 publishers for the organization’s StatShot report. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Could the coronavirus crisis and the UK lockdown be offering the publishing industry a glimpse into a world without bookshops? Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-30 02:18:22 UTC ]
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Publishing industry sales had a nice start to 2020, rising 3.5% through February, according to AAP's StatShot program. Sales of adult books were up 2.9%, and sales in the children/young adult rose 6.3%. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-27 04:00:00 UTC ]
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In a joint statement released to mark World Book Day, leaders of three organizations serving the publishing industry issued a cry to support the country’s booksellers as they struggle to survive the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-24 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Bluemoose Books founder Kevin Duffy has called on the publishing industry to rally behind its smaller presses at this time of crisis and to establish a fund to help independent publishers survive what Duffy said had been a 90% reduction in revenue as a result of the lockdown. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-14 17:49:26 UTC ]
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For the first time, a spate of new and forthcoming titles written by people with disabilities across the United States suggests that the publishing industry may finally be amplifying their voices and stories. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-03 04:00:00 UTC ]
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