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 ]
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Publication Date: Mon, 09/05/2011 - 13:07 Quadrille has scored four nominations for this year's Guild of Food Writers awards. Titles from Stevie Parle, Josceline Dimbleby, Mark Hix and Mark Diacono were shortlisted, with the latter's A Taste of the Unexpected squaring up against two Jacqui... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Wed, 04/05/2011 - 09:15 Somerset and Gloucestershire county councils have been landed with a judicial review in the High Court over their plans to close over 20 libraries. Somerset County Council plans to withdraw funding for 11 libraries while... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 21/04/2011 - 10:29 Random House imprint Hammer has acquired the latest title by Orange-prize winner Helen Dunmore, in a special project for the Penguin author. Century and Arrow publisher Kate Elton bought UK and Commonwealth rights to The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Wed, 20/04/2011 - 15:13 Palazzo Editions will publish a "major" retrospective of the work of Steven Spielberg in August 2012, written in co-operation with the director. Steven Spielberg: A Retrospective will be written by film critic and documentary... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In the first step of a two-phase launch, the long-awaited Los Angeles Review of Books has debuted its preview site at lareviewofbooks.org with essays and reviews by Ben Ehrenreich, Geoff Nicholson, Jane Smiley, Jefferson Hunter, and Richard Prince. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-04-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Wed, 23/03/2011 - 07:50 Writer, journalist and editor Peter Forbes' exploration of mimicry and camouflage in nature, art and warfare has been awarded the £50,000 Warwick Prize for Writing. His Dazzled and Deceived (Yale University Press) was described by chair of judges... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Thu, 17/03/2011 - 15:57 Luke Johnson, best known in the book trade for his spell owning Borders, and fellow Financial Times journalist Mrs Moneypenny are writing business titles for Penguin's business imprint Portfolio. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Wed, 16/03/2011 - 09:04 Hodder thriller imprint Mulholland Books has acquired a fiction debut by "Saw" writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, and author, screenwriter and illustrator Stephen Romano. Editor Ruth Tross bought British... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 15/03/2011 - 09:58 Price and range have been highlighted as the most important factors in buying habits of online book buyers, with recommendation and review less crucial. In a survey of 91,500 customers worldwide on the Book Depository's... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Katie Allen Publication Date: Fri, 11/03/2011 - 15:47 Transworld/Bantam novelist Manda Scott has formed the Historical Writers Association as a forum for writers and to promote the genre. The internet-based group, which already boasts around 100 members including authors Simon... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Tue, 01/03/2011 - 15:50 The Orange New Writers Book of the Month promotion launches today [1st March] featuring Emma Henderson as the first writer to receive a month-long promotion in Waterstone's. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-03-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Wed, 23/02/2011 - 09:34 Margaret Atwood, Alan Bennett and John Le Carre will be among the authors headlining the World Book Night launch event in Trafalgar Square on 4th March. Graham Norton will compere the event, with Philip Pullman, Sarah... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Wed, 16/02/2011 - 07:06 Author Margaret Atwood used her Tools of Change keynote speech to warn the industry not to eliminate authors, and make sure they are paid enough to "pay for the cheese sandwiches". read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Wed, 16/02/2011 - 06:35 Independent publisher Myrmidon has bought world English language rights (excluding South Africa) to a novel shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize. Ed Handyside, publisher and founder, bought the rights to Trespass... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As Meghan O'Rourke reported here last week, VIDA, an organization for women writers, has released a tally of male and female bylines for the 2010 run of 14 high-end, literary-oriented magazines. Despite a couple of relatively bright spots (the New York Times Book Review surprisingly being one),... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-02-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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By Tim Conneally, Betanews Amazon on Monday pre-released a software update for Kindle e-readers running the 3.0 software which updates the interface for magazines and newspapers, adds a quick review section at the end of each book, and adds page numbers that match Kindle books with their print... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2011-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams The Publishers Association [PA] has attacked the culture secretary's decision to allow communications watchdog Ofcom to "delay" the Digital Economy Act. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced yesterday [1st February] that Ofcom is to assess whether the Act's... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-02-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Puffin is to publish a new picture book by The Very Hungry Caterpillar author Eric Carle, his first in four years. The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse will be published in October 2011, in a global, simultaneous publication with Philomel, a Penguin Young Readers... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-01-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In 1919, the young E.B. White, future New Yorker writer and author of Charlotte's Web, took a class at Cornell University with a drill sergeant of an English professor named William Strunk Jr. Strunk assigned his self-published manual on composition titled "The Elements of Style," a 43-page list... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Simon & Schuster requested that journalists and other writers not comment if asked whether they were responsible for the novel O, about a fictional 2012 presidential campaign. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-01-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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