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 ]
News tagged with:
#life cycle
#publishing industry
#works hard
Can fraudulent writers, aka Johah Lehrer, ever be forgiven? Or should they simply be cast into permanent exile from the literary world? Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2012-11-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#literary world
More Info Hands-on with Kobo's Glo and Mini e-readers (video) Kobo Glo review: another illuminated e-reader lights up the market Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review While tablet and smartphone manufacturers battled it out over screen sizes, e-reader makers seem to have settled on an... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#industry standard
#e-reading device
#originally appeared
Pan Macmillan is the latest publisher to start offering creative writing tutoring. It will begin... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#pan macmillan
#latest publisher
Technology Review has relaunched itself as MIT Technology Review, completing a digital-first transformation worthy of its cutting-edge namesake. Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2012-10-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#digital focus
#technology review
A group of writers are quids in following an experiment to sell a bundle of DRM-free ebooks. Sales of The Humble Bundle, which included works from authors Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman and the much-loved xkcd comic strip, have been anything but humble, with over 84,000 bundles sold, earning the... Continue reading at Fast Company
[ Fast Company | 2012-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#included works
#neil gaiman
#bought separately
#lauren beukes
#zoo city
One of the writers behind disaster-prone Spider-Man Broadway musical, Glen Berger, will reveal all in a "fly-on-the-wall" book. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2012-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Some 20 weeks before Newsweek set the media into a frenzy with its announcement of a digital-first publishing strategy, Jason Pontin was already grappling with how to move his 113-year-old publication toward a digital future. Pontin announced in June that MIT's Technology Review magazine would... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2012-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#original content
#reader data
Authors Margaret Atwood (pictured) and Naomi Alderman are to collaborate on a new fiction series... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#naomi alderman
#fiction series
Australia's first major literary prize for women's writing, the Stella Prize, said to be... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#stella prize
Syrian writer Samar Yazbek, author of A Woman in the Crossfire (Haus Publishing), has been chosen... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Author JK Rowling has promised fans that her next published book will be for children. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2012-10-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#published book
Called 'the best e-reader you can buy,' the Paperwhite has debuted to almost universal praise. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-10-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz, reporter David Finkel, and writer Dinaw Mengestu were honored by the MacArthur Foundation, each receiving a $500,000 grant. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-10-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#junot diaz
Industry insiders are predicting further restructures across the travel sector, following news... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#travel sector
#industry insiders
Mixed reviews for J K Rowling's The Casual Vacancy (Little, Brown) this morning (27th... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#casual vacancy
Booksellers have become book writers for a popular science project from Icon Books. Icon’s... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#icon books
#book writers
Government-appointed panel to consider what role can ebooks play in our libraries in future. Continue reading at BBC World
[ BBC World | 2012-09-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
The government is expected to announce a review of library e-lending tomorrow (Wednesday 26th... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
Penguin is understood to have begun a review of its travel division, with staff informed today (... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-09-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#travel publishing
#travel division