The American author was not only brilliant but also generous and kind to younger writers, writes Emma BrockesThere is that famous photo of Joan Didion, taken in Malibu in 1976, in which she leans on a deck overlooking the beach, cigarette in hand, scotch glass at her elbow, and regards her family – John Dunne, her husband, and their then 10-year-old daughter, Quintana – through lowered, side-long eyes. Like other iconic photos of Didion from the period, she is at one remove from the group, off to the side and in this case, looking not at the camera but at her family as they look at the camera. It’s the pose Didion perfected, in life as in art, and when news of her death at the age of 87 broke on Thursday, it was a shock to see another frame from that sequence surface online. In it, Didion, eyes fixed forward, smiles broadly at the camera in the conventional style – a rare glimpse behind the persona.The paradox of Didion was not unusual among writers, whose confidence is often born of a million anxieties. But her ability to operate outside herself – to measure the gap between inside and out and slyly mock any effort to conceal it – was unparalleled. She was, famously and by her own account, diffident, brittle, runtish, prone to migraines, afraid of the telephone, and as she wrote in the preface to her 1968 collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “bad at interviewing people”, apparent deficits that, in Didion’s hands, were of course precisely what permitted her entry to... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-12-24 18:44:54 UTC ]
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The author of 70 novels translated into 29 languages, Valerie Parv has passed away just before her 70th birthday. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2021-04-30 05:02:04 UTC ]
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The interlinked stories in Silber’s novel unfurl with such verbal verisimilitude that they’re like late-night phone calls from old friends. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-04-26 09:53:18 UTC ]
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The New Yorker writer’s new book remind us of how much we’ve forgotten or neglected because of our widespread cultural amnesia. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-04-21 05:24:46 UTC ]
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Literary Tributes When we heard the news yesterday that Adam Zagajewski had passed away at the age of seventy-five in Kraków, Poland, we immediately thought not only of his exceptional poetry and essays but also of his exceedingly warm congeniality.... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2021-03-22 18:27:58 UTC ]
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The author of more than 120 books, she earned the devotion of millions of readers with her sentimental depictions of little ones, their features often reduced to their all-seeing eyes. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-03-19 14:48:47 UTC ]
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Children's book creator Joan Walsh Anglund, widely known for her instantly recognizable images of sweet-faced, dot-eyed children, died on March 9; she was 95. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-03-18 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The pandemic has left me feeling wistful for a past filled with delightful bookish encounters. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-03-16 09:47:33 UTC ]
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Unless you’re a disgraced politician, trying to get a book published can be difficult, nerve-wracking, soul-denting work. If you’re anything like me, though, it really helps to hear that rejection is the rule in the publishing industry, rather than the exception. When my novel was out on... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-03-10 17:04:17 UTC ]
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WHAT WOULD YOU DO if the person who hurt you most refused to say they were sorry? Could you forgive anyway? Best-selling author Susan Shapiro explores this universal question in her intriguing, insightful, all-too-relatable new book The Forgiveness Tour, out this past January. In her... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-02-21 18:00:04 UTC ]
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Viking has snared a “definitive” history of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union, from broadcaster and author Jonathan Dimbleby. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-17 07:17:20 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury imprint Green Tree will publish Perimenopause Power by women’s health practitioner Maisie Hill. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-12-02 02:23:40 UTC ]
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Two recently published and appealingly idiosyncratic memoirs reflect this week’s autumnal spirit. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-11-25 14:00:00 UTC ]
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Walker Books had a record year in 2019, with turnover increasing 7% and operating profit soaring 17%, newly released financial results show. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-22 21:28:03 UTC ]
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Poets House, the poetry library in lower Manhattan founded in 1986, has suspended operations indefinitely, due to budgetary issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, Lee Briccetti, the executive director of Poets House for more than 30 years, will retire in 2021. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-11-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Joan Bingham, longtime executive editor of Grove Atlantic and a key figure in the merger that created the house, died October 31. She was 85. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-11-02 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Printing on demand and bookshops' returns policies are two major areas of the industry that need to be addressed to move the trade towards a more sustainable operation, delegates at the Independent Publishers Guild conference heard on Wednesday. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-10-21 13:20:15 UTC ]
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A federal judge in Washington has issued a preliminary injunction against a major e-book piracy operation known as the KISS Library, after the operators of the site failed to show up at a hearing or to file any response to a lawsuit filed in July by the Authors Guild, Amazon Publishing, Penguin... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-09-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Ross Bradshaw responds to an editorial on the boom in publishing We were interested to read that “Bookshops in big city centres … are wary of taking risks” (Editorial, 23 August), and that this autumn’s harvest includes books by Ant and Dec, Jilly Cooper and Arsène Wenger, which have the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-08-26 16:44:13 UTC ]
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Ah, yes, the good old days: when novelists lent their faces and testimonials to advertisers hoping to sell tires, or a certain kind of beer, or fancy watches. It’s something you don’t see very much anymore, because we writers have become too principled to participate in advertising campaigns.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-08-19 17:14:06 UTC ]
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Orion Publishing Group has bought the first official book of award-winning comedy podcast "Dear Joan and Jericha", written by Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine, in a "hotly contested" auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-06-29 11:07:07 UTC ]
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