The big idea: should we abolish literary genres?

Categorising fiction may help to sell books, but it says little about how writers write or readers readIn her Reith lecture of 2017, recently published for the first time in a posthumous collection of nonfiction, A Memoir of My Former Self, Hilary Mantel recalled the beginnings of her career as a novelist. It was the 1970s. “In those days historical fiction wasn’t respectable or respected,” she recalled. “It meant historical romance. If you read a brilliant novel like I, Claudius, you didn’t taint it with the genre label, you just thought of it as literature. So, I was shy about naming what I was doing. All the same, I began. I wanted to find a novel I liked, about the French Revolution. I couldn’t, so I started making one.”She made A Place of Greater Safety, an exceptional ensemble portrayal of the revolutionaries Danton, Robespierre and Desmoulins, but although the novel was completed in 1979, it wasn’t published until 1992 – widely rejected, as she later explained, because although she thought the French Revolution was the most interesting thing in the world, the reading public didn’t agree, or publishers had concluded they didn’t. She decided to write a contemporary novel – Every Day Is Mother’s Day – purely to get published; A Place of Greater Safety emerged only when she contributed to a Guardian piece about writers’ unpublished first novels. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-11-27 12:30:00 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "The big idea: should we abolish literary genres?"


Cher sets November release date for first installment of two-part memoir, 'Cher: The Memoir, Part One'

Cher is splitting her upcoming memoir into two parts because she has a life 'too immense for only one book,' publisher Dey Street Books says. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-07-24 16:24:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this


What do scientists have to learn from wildlife? The value of diversity.

Jasmin Graham’s fresh and innovative memoir details how her work as a “rogue” shark scientist pushes science to include more diverse perspectives. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2024-07-24 14:20:39 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Suzanne Scanlon’s Memoir Confronts the Stories We Don’t Tell About Women and Madness

Suzanne Scanlon’s book, Committed: A Memoir of Finding Meaning in Madness, is a memoir unlike any I’ve read. Scanlon returns to the landscape of the past, reflecting on her experience of being committed in the New York State Psychiatric Hospital while a student at Barnard in the late 1990s.... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-07-23 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Book Review: ‘Desperately Seeking Something,’ by Susan Seidelman

In the memoir “Desperately Seeking Something,” Susan Seidelman’s life is as full of twists, charm and happy endings as one of her iconic movies. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2024-07-23 09:00:50 UTC ]
More news stories like this


War, Trauma, and Human Courage: A Conversation with Zhang Ling, by Yan Lu

War, Trauma, and Human Courage: A Conversation with Zhang Ling, by Yan Lu Interviews [email protected] Mon, 07/22/2024 - 16:20 Zhang Ling is the author of ten novels, including A Single Swallow (trans. Shelly Bryant) and Where Waters Meet, the... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2024-07-22 21:20:19 UTC ]
More news stories like this


What to read this week: The Light Eaters, Paranoid Gardens and I Was a Teenage Slasher

Recent releases in fiction, nonfiction and comics that caught our attention. I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones Stephen Graham Jones is something of an expert on slashers. The author has tackled the genre in a slew of his novels (most notably in the Indian Lake Trilogy, with its... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2024-07-20 13:30:12 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Goodreads reviews of JD Vance’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ are stuck in limbo amid news that Trump picked the author to be his VP

If you had a sudden urge to review the 2016 memoir for some reason, you might be out of luck right now. Yesterday, former president Donald Trump announced his running mate for the 2024 election: Senator JD Vance of Ohio. Vance, a onetime fierce critic of Trump, is a relative newcomer to... Continue reading at Fast Company

[ Fast Company | 2024-07-16 12:25:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


'Hillbilly Elegy': JD Vance's rise to vice presidential candidate began with a bestselling memoir

At the heart of JD Vance’s journey from venture capitalist to vice presidential candidate is a memoir he first thought of in law school, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Continue reading at ABC News

[ ABC News | 2024-07-16 01:50:32 UTC ]
More news stories like this


What the All-American Delusion of the Polygraph Says About Our Relationship to Fact and Fiction

A few weeks before the release of my first book, a memoir about my mother’s murder, I had to take a polygraph exam. The two things were not in fact related, but that was easy to forget once I found myself strapped in a chair in a windowless room on the fourth floor of a […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2024-07-15 08:56:51 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Margaret Juhae Lee on How Secrets Fuel Memoir Writing

Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is currently in its fourth year. We are a weekly podcast for writers craving a unique blend of inspiration and real talk about the ups and downs of the writing life. Hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2024-07-15 08:01:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Death to Books

‘In her concern for making a tidy death, my mum overlooked that other kind of mess which is grief, and guilt, and confusion.’ Memoir by Luke Allan. The post Death to Books appeared first on Granta. Continue reading at Granta

[ Granta | 2024-07-11 12:54:44 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Lin-Manuel Miranda's next musical is based on a New York cult classic

Lin-Manuel Miranda is wrapping up the recording of a concept album for a new musical co-written by playwright Eisa Davis, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The album will be based on the 1979 movie "The Warriors," whose sympathetic depictions of gang members and gritty... Continue reading at Crains New York

[ Crains New York | 2024-07-09 10:03:03 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Always Running: Luis J. Rodríguez’s memoir of gang days in LA is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago

Many of the book’s themes, including structural racism, inequalities and poverty are as topical now as 30 years ago. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2024-07-08 15:26:53 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Book Deals: Week of July 8, 2024

Bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe sells a new souther epic to Morrow, Hillary Clinton’s new memoir goes to Simon & Schuster, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-07-05 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Exclusive Cover Reveal: “Song So Wild and Blue” by Paul Lisicky

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with Joni Mitchell, the new memoir by acclaimed writer Paul Lisicky, which will be published by HarperOne on February 4th, 2025. You can pre-order your copy here. From the moment Paul Lisicky heard Joni Mitchell... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2024-07-03 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Book Riot’s Deals of the Day for July 2, 2024

A Rastafarian memoir for fans of Educated, a final girls thriller, a love letter to bookstores, and more of today's best book deals. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2024-07-02 15:05:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Top 10 benefits of Amazon Prime: Free shipping is just the start

Amazon Prime built its popularity by offering subscribers faster free shipping, access to streaming movies and TV shows, and exclusive deals (most noticeably during the company’s Prime Day dealfest, coming again July 16 and 17). But Prime membership includes other perks, too: Everything... Continue reading at PC World

[ PC World | 2024-07-01 13:28:52 UTC ]
More news stories like this


The News Book Riot Covered This Week

The bestselling books of the week, the best historical fiction of 2024 so far, book banning updates, and more. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2024-06-29 15:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


2 Books to Make You Love Karaoke, or at Least Respect It

In a memoir and a novel, the characters deal with grief by singing in front of strangers. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2024-06-29 11:50:03 UTC ]
More news stories like this


16 New Books Coming in July

New novels from J. Courtney Sullivan and Liz Moore, a memoir by a “hacktivist” member of Anonymous — and more. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2024-06-28 09:02:43 UTC ]
More news stories like this