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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Possibly the most famous book review, ever, was written by the young Irish wit and polemicist John Wilson Croker. Croker is still remembered, though obscurely, as a founder of modern political conservatism. What's more, according to some sources, John Wilson Croker invented the very term... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-07-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Thu, 21/07/2011 - 13:00 British Science Fiction award-winner Alastair Reynolds is the latest author to try his hand writing a Doctor Who novel, after signing a deal with BBC Books. Editorial director Albert DePetrillo bought world rights from Robert... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Adding to their rapidly expanding portfolio of e-commerce storefronts, F + W Media acquired The Writers Store. Becoming the 26th store under the F + W umbrella, The Writers Store sells third-party writing and filmmaking tools globally. The Writers Store offers tools, services and exclusive... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2011-07-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Wed, 20/07/2011 - 09:10 Brent council failed to comply with its legal obligations under the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act when planning the closure of six of its libraries, the High Court was told on the first day of the judicial review... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Sheila C. Bair, who ended a tumultuous five-year term as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation this month, has landed a book deal to give her inside account of the financial crisis. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-07-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Thu, 07/07/2011 - 15:47 read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Wed, 06/07/2011 - 08:02 A court hearing to decide whether permission will be given for a judicial review to proceed against Gloucestershire library cuts is to take place in Birmingham tomorrow (Thursday 7th July). If allowed to proceed, the judicial... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Wed, 06/07/2011 - 16:25 The Legal Services Commission, which handles legal aid, has been accused of "cynically changing the rules" by ignoring the decision of its own appeals panel that library campaigners pursuing judicial review claims should not... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 30/06/2011 - 15:01 Bloomsbury has acquired three YA books by Irish author, Sarah Crossan. Senior commissioning editor Ele Fountain acquired the trio of titles through Julia Churchill at Greenhouse, with the first title, Breathe, to be... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Young-adult books are being sold to an audience that can't vote, yet they're being written by people commonly referred to on the Internet as "the olds." We should know. We're two of them. Both of us have made our living writing. One of us in journalism (Grady) and the other in literary fiction... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-06-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Philip Jones Publication Date: Thu, 09/06/2011 - 10:05 Literary agent Peter Cox has offered to review "any" contract given to an author by an agent for free in order to ensure that the author has "impartial advice". The move is a response to agents setting up their own publishing... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Bookseller Staff Publication Date: Thu, 02/06/2011 - 08:37 Nobel Prize-winning author V S Naipaul has declared that women's writing is "unequal" to his, during an event at the Hay Festival. The writer, who won the Man Booker in 1971 for In a Free State, said during an interview... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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According to the Associated Press StylebookSlate's bible for all things punctuation- and grammar-relatedthere are two main prose usesthe abrupt change and the series within a phrasefor the em dash. The guide does not explicitly say that writers can use the dash in lieu of properly crafting... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-05-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Mon, 23/05/2011 - 12:15 Aminatta Forna has won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2011 Best Book for her novel The Memory of Love (Bloomsbury). The judges described the novel as "a bold, deeply moving and accomplished novel which confirms her place among the most talented writers... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Wed, 18/05/2011 - 09:55 Publishers appear to have got a reprieve in the Hargreaves Review into intellectual property with it recommending against imposing an American style 'Fair Use' defence for copyright exceptions. The report also suggested the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-18 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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