The BBC’s Fergal Keane: ‘The breakdowns get harder to recover from each time’

The former BBC war reporter, now special correspondent, on the terror of PTSD, his tips for living with it day to day, and the people and poets he admiresDuring a career spanning more than 30 years, BBC special correspondent Fergal Keane has covered brutal conflicts in South Africa, Rwanda and Bosnia. It’s taken a lasting toll on his mental health, and in 2020 he stepped back from frontline reporting, revealing that he’s suffering from acute PTSD. In his memoir The Madness, newly published in paperback, he goes into greater detail, powerfully describing multiple breakdowns, alcoholism, and the inherited trauma that shaped his Irish childhood, as well as the resilience he’s found in himself. He will be talking at the Edinburgh International book festival on 17 August.What part of The Madness was hardest to write?Most difficult was what it was like to be in a psychiatric hospital. People talk about going mad and it conjures up all kinds of stereotypical images, but it’s terrifying, it’s this implosion. I’ve never been so afraid in my life. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-08-06 08:30:06 UTC ]

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Connect Meetings Acquires BizBash

BizBash, the 19-year old B2B media company for events organizers, has been acquired by Connect Meetings for an undisclosed sum, both sides announced. A subsidiary of the UK-based, global tradeshow company Tarsus Group, Connect serves meeting planners—in particular, those who organize corporate,... Continue reading at Folio Magazine

[ Folio Magazine | 2019-12-17 20:01:44 UTC ]
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Ali Wong’s Memoir Isn’t Just About Asian Americans—It’s Written To and For Us

When I read the reviews of Ali Wong’s memoir Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice For Living Your Best Life, I was at first thrilled—the responses were glowing—and then perplexed. I fundamentally agreed with what they said: that the book is a more intimate and poignant (yet... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-16 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Puffin lands Jacqueline Woodson's New York Times bestseller

Puffin will publish Brown Girl Dreaming, the multi-award winning memoir told in verse by author Jacqueline Woodson. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-15 18:04:41 UTC ]
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#Merky Books snaps up youth activist Jeremiah Emmanuel's memoir

#Merky Books will publish the memoir of youth activist Jeremiah Emmanuel, “a guide to overcoming the obstacles young people should not have to face”. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-15 13:08:54 UTC ]
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Elisabeth Sifton, Editor and Tamer of Literary Lions, Dies at 80

She was also a publisher and an author whose memoir affirmed that her father, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, had popularized the Serenity Prayer. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-12-13 22:52:39 UTC ]
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Revisiting André Aciman’s Eccentric Family

This week, Josh Duboff reviews André Aciman’s “Find Me,” the sequel to his 2007 novel “Call Me by Your Name.” In 1995, Barry Unsworth wrote for the Book Review about “Out of Egypt,” Aciman’s memoir chronicling the family that shaped his life. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-12-13 10:00:09 UTC ]
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W&N pre-empts 'breathtaking' memoir from Shadrick

Weidenfeld & Nicolson has pre-empted a “breathtaking” memoir from Tanya Shadrick about waking from a coma. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-12 23:53:18 UTC ]
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Lilly Dancyger Wants You to Embrace Your Bad First Draft

In our series “Can Writing Be Taught?” we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This time we’re talking to Lilly Dancyger, editor at Narratively and author of the forthcoming memoir Negative Space. Lilly’s next... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2019-12-12 12:00:00 UTC ]
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The Lost Books of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas review – how Austen's reputation has been warped

A deliciously original study of the cheap editions of Pride and Prejudice and other novels – ignored by literary scholars – casts new light on her readershipJane Austen aficionados think that they know the story of their favourite author’s posthumous dis-appearance and then re-emergence. For... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2019-12-11 07:30:31 UTC ]
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Alastair Campbell's mental health memoir to John Murray

Former political aide and author Alastair Campbell is publishing a "candid" and "empowering" memoir about his struggles with mental health Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-11 06:30:30 UTC ]
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Quiller buys prison memoir of NatWest Three member Darby

Quiller has bought the memoir of former British banker Giles Darby, one of the NatWest Three who was jailed in the US for his involvement in a $7m fraud. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-10 16:17:14 UTC ]
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Fourth Estate triumphs in six-publisher auction for O’Neill’s Belfast memoir

Alix O’Neill’s memoir of growing up in a Republican area of Belfast during the 1990s has gone to Fourth Estate Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-12-10 02:33:14 UTC ]
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The long moral shadows cast by South Africa's colonial history

A new history book shows how entanglements of race, gender, class and sexuality in South Africa flow from the moral contradictions of the settler colonial state. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2019-12-08 07:14:51 UTC ]
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Edelweiss, Edelweiss? Julie Andrews Loves Reading About 18th-Century Plant Hunters

“I’m fascinated by stories of how the various plant specimens we take for granted today were originally discovered,” says the actor, whose latest book is “Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years.” Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2019-12-05 10:00:03 UTC ]
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'Crawdads,' 'Becoming' Top Amazon 2019 Lists

Led by sales of such of powerhouse titles as Delia Owen's wildly popular novel 'Where the Crawdads Sing' on the fiction list, and Michelle Obama's memoir 'Becoming' for nonfiction, Amazon released lists of the e-tailers top selling books of 2019. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-12-05 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Mitch Albom Reads From His New Memoir Finding Chika

Storybound is a radio theater program designed for the podcast age. Hosted by Jude Brewer and with original music composed for each episode, the podcast features the voices of today’s literary icons reading their essays, poems, and fiction. In our first episode, Mitch Albom reads an excerpt from... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-03 09:47:32 UTC ]
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Lit Hub Weekly: November 25 – 27, 2019

Of Bohumil Hrabal’s six great loves, guess how many were cats? (Hint: almost all of them.) | Lit Hub Memoir The car culture that’s helping destroy the planet was by no means inevitable: on the relentless campaign to force Americans to accept the automobile. | Lit Hub History Here are the 78 best... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-30 12:30:39 UTC ]
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Hutchinson snaps up Carys Bray's climate change novel

Hutchinson has signed the new novel from award-winning author Carys Bray about the impact of climate change on mental health. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-28 15:45:29 UTC ]
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Authors urge publishers to 'give space' to mental health

Authors have discussed the importance of perspectives on mental health when considering diversity and inclusion, with Rose Cartwright revealing she walked away from a traditional publishing deal for fear of being “compromised”. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-26 00:58:31 UTC ]
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An American Boy and His Jamaican Nanny: A Conversation with Ross Kenneth Urken

“UNLIKE MOST JEWISH BOYS from New Jersey, I have a Jamaican accent,” writes Ross Kenneth Urken in Another Mother, his memoir in which he goes in search of both his recollections of the Jamaican nanny who raised him and all of the things he never knew about her before she died. He writes,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-24 20:00:33 UTC ]
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