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purely to get published; A Place of Greater Safety emerged only when she contributed to a Guardian piece about writers’ unpublished first novels.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 ]
The former children’s laureate shares her sometimes enraging story of rejection, determination and resilienceAt the beginning of Malorie Blackman’s engrossing and often shocking memoir, the former children’s laureate asks: “Why am I an author?” What she goes on to tell us certainly shows how she... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-10-19 06:30:17 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In his memoir 'Beyond the Wand,' Tom Felton shares behind-the-scenes tales from the 'Harry Potter' franchise and chronicles his struggle with alcohol. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-10-18 20:19:47 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Unsurprisingly, George Saunders is kind of a chaotic reader. | Lit Hub Ross Gay sings the praises of adult braces, feeling needed, and kissing a very small dog one million times. | Lit Hub Memoir “It is this uneasiness that helped me nurture such a wild and fucked-up imagination—an imagination... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-10-18 10:30:42 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The book, to be written with her husband Richard Ratcliffe, will detail her six years in prison and the campaign for her releaseNazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who spent six years in jail in Iran, is to write a memoir with her husband Richard Ratcliffe.The book, which is currently untitled, will tell... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-10-18 09:45:58 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The Hudson Valley-based Golden Notebook Bookstore will launch its publishing press next year with author Abigail Thomas's memoir 'Still Life at 80: The Next Interesting Thing.' Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-10-18 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Compiled from interviews he gave to a close friend, “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man” sheds light on the self-doubt of the seemingly imperturbable Hollywood star. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-10-16 18:47:52 UTC ]
More news stories like this
"The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man" draws on reams of interview transcripts rediscovered after Paul Newman's death. Here's how it came together. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-10-16 13:00:47 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Compiled from interviews he gave to a close friend, “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man” sheds light on the self-doubt of the seemingly imperturbable Hollywood star. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-10-16 09:00:11 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Flatiron signs a novel by Whiting Award winner Caitlin Greenidge, Legacy Lit nabs a memoir by podcaster Jonathan Conyers, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-10-14 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Prince Shakur’s debut memoir When They Tell You to Be Good starts with an argument between him and his mother which recalls the image of his father’s murder, a man he never got to know. In unflinchingly honest detail Shakur traces his own journey of self actualization as a queer, Black Jamaican... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-10-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Her win also marks the ascendancy of the memoir as the leading genre of our time. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2022-10-09 17:07:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“A woman is a useful symbol for the splay of land on which such a free man saunters.” Rachel Richardson on Thoreau, running, and the pleasures of not quite knowing where you’re going. | Lit Hub Memoir In praise of multiple narrators: Rubén Degollado recommends Dawnie Walton, Tommy Orange, Juan... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-10-07 10:30:18 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Jada Pinkett Smith's memoir will take readers on 'a rollercoaster ride from the depths of suicidal depression to the heights of personal rediscovery.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-10-06 19:59:48 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The French writer, who was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, blurs the line between fiction and memoir with spare prose she has characterized as “brutally direct.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-10-06 16:13:27 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“Cheever drank. Roth womanized. My grandfather wrote quietly in his office for 60 years.” Alison Fairbrother on learning lessons—in writing and life—from her grandfather, E.L. Doctorow. | Lit Hub Memoir Nina Totenberg reflects on her long friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of “small... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-10-06 10:30:07 UTC ]
More news stories like this
As Tony Montana would probably say if he were a literary agent: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the memoir. That’s right! Al Pacino is reportedly in talks to sell his first memoir […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-10-05 14:49:52 UTC ]
More news stories like this
David Ulin talks with Lynne Tillman about "Mothercare," her memoir on managing her mother's decline — just as he begins a similar journey. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-09-29 13:00:09 UTC ]
More news stories like this
“Love and writing are the only two things in the world that I can bear, the rest is darkness.” Read from Annie Ernaux’s lovelorn 1988 diary. | Lit Hub Memoir Why do we overuse (ecstatic!! hyperbolic!!!) language? Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza investigates. | Lit Hub The slow decline of glory:... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-09-27 10:30:29 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Companies providing ghostwritten autobiographies for people wanting to share histories have seen surge in trade since CovidBrian Lewis grew up on a tough council estate after arriving in Britain as part of the Windrush generation. At the age of eight he developed an interest in chess and joined... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-09-24 14:00:06 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Mantel was credited with reenergizing historical fiction with “Wolf Hall” and two sequels about the 16th-century English powerbroker Thomas Cromwell. Continue reading at The Huffington Post
[ The Huffington Post | 2022-09-23 10:42:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this