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purely to get published; A Place of Greater Safety emerged only when she contributed to a Guardian piece about writers’ unpublished first novels.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 ]
Rich Benjamin’s new book Talk to Me explores the coup that overthrew his grandfather, the president of Haiti, in 1957. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2025-02-15 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Three dynamic queer characters carve a place for themselves among Gilded Age New York's elite in Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's MUTUAL INTEREST. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-02-14 12:30:00 UTC ]
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A big-name picture book adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” goes to HarperCollins, Margaret Atwood brings a memoir to Doubleday, Sourcebooks picks up the memoir of the daughter of Gisele Pelicot, and more in this week’s book deals. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2025-02-14 05:00:00 UTC ]
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The multi-award winning feminist author Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) has announced that she will be releasing her long-awaited memoir ... Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-02-12 19:59:13 UTC ]
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“I am determined to keep writing, it has never mattered to me more.” Hanif Kureishi on trauma, recovery and what it means to be a writer. | Lit Hub Memoir Just in time for Valentine’s Day: 25 writers explain the anatomy of a good sex scene. | Lit Hub Craft Pankaj Mishra on nationalism,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-11 11:30:21 UTC ]
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The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to: * Justin Haynes (Ibis) Shane McCrae (New and Collected Hell: A Poem) Haley Mlotek (No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce) Maggie Su (Blob: A Love Story)... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-11 09:57:52 UTC ]
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This story about a child with cerebral palsy is badly misleading – and a slap in the face for families like oursAmazing news from Netflix: there is an extraordinary treatment available for children with very severe neurological disabilities, one that, given the appropriate level of parental... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2025-02-11 08:00:11 UTC ]
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I’ve known Lauren Markham’s writing since her first book, The Faraway Brothers, came out in 2017. Then, a couple years ago, I got to know her a bit more as a person when a friend emailed the two of us and another writer to ask our thoughts on writing (and teaching) journalism versus memoir or […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-07 09:57:40 UTC ]
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In Sarah Chihaya’s memoir Bibliophobia, we enter into the moment of her breakdown—an event that she has seen on her horizon since childhood, but also seemed impossibly remote. As a child of Japanese and Japanese-Canadian immigrants to the US, Chihaya’s parents “didn’t really believe in the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-02-06 09:56:18 UTC ]
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Historical fiction centering *The* Woman behind the Harlem Renaissance, a tropical rebel gets her duke, and more of this month's best book club books. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-02-04 13:30:00 UTC ]
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Sarah Chihaya’s unconventional memoir charts her troubled relationship with the literature that formed her. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2025-01-31 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Edmund White’s The Loves of My Life, Dorian Lynsky’s Everything Must Go, and Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine all feature among the best reviewed nonfiction titles of the month. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews. * 1. The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir by Edmund White... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-01-31 09:58:15 UTC ]
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This searing memoir recounts one woman's epic journey to trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean—and find her ... Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2025-01-30 12:00:00 UTC ]
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A new memoir by the tech mogul recounts a boyhood steeped in old-fashioned, analog pastimes as well as precocious feats of coding. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2025-01-30 10:05:04 UTC ]
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It’s among the more playful matters on his mind in “Shattered,” a memoir of the injury that took away his ability to turn pages — but not his hunger to tell a story. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2025-01-30 10:00:13 UTC ]
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At 84, Edmund White is ready to kiss (to put it mildly) and tell ... well, everything. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2025-01-28 16:56:52 UTC ]
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By the time I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings hit shelves in the first days of 1970, buzz about the memoir had been building for some time. Newspaper stories about its author, Maya Angelou—a well-known dancer, singer, and political activist—had been teasing the book for years; both Ebony and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2025-01-28 09:57:54 UTC ]
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