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purely to get published; A Place of Greater Safety emerged only when she contributed to a Guardian piece about writers’ unpublished first novels.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 ]
Surrender, which will ‘draw in detail’ what he had previously only sketched in songs, will contain 40 chapters, each named after a U2 song, and include 40 original drawings by the singerThe first memoir by Bono will be released this year, publisher Penguin Random House has announced.While the U2... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-05-10 15:24:58 UTC ]
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Look, The Joshua Tree was the first album I ever bought with my own money. I have a soft spot for U2, up to and including Achtung Baby (I guess). And I suppose a memoir by one of the biggest rock stars of a generation is to be expected, particularly one who’s assumed an often […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-05-10 13:35:33 UTC ]
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The DJ and writer on coming to terms with being a novelist, the appeal of middle-aged men and the book that broke her heartRadio 2 DJ Sara Cox has come a long way since the 1990s when Channel 4’s The Girlie Show made her one of the original ladettes. In 2019, her memoir Till the Cows Come Home:... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-05-07 17:00:05 UTC ]
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Lost in the subject matter: Gerald Murnane rereads his first novel, Tamarisk Road, nearly 50 years later. | Lit Hub Why Twitter loves James Baldwin (and whether that’s a good thing). | Lit Hub A quiet reply to a life cut short: Elisha Cooper on coming to terms with what killed his brother. | Lit... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-05-07 10:30:22 UTC ]
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Viola Davis has the #1 book in the country with the memoir 'Finding Me.' Plus Don Winslow's 'City on Fire' heats up our hardcover fiction list, and Alice Oseman's Heartstopper books get a boost from Netflix. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-05-06 04:00:00 UTC ]
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“No one would know it was us,” the former president said, according to an upcoming memoir written by the former Pentagon chief. Continue reading at HuffPost
[ HuffPost | 2022-05-06 01:41:29 UTC ]
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Monique Roffey, the Costa-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch, on the lit-boom that’s happening on the Caribbean islandLast week, Trinidadian writer Lisa Allen-Agostini’s novel The Bread the Devil Knead landed a coveted spot on the Women’s prize shortlist. As a fellow Trinidadian... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-05-03 13:03:34 UTC ]
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The son-in-law and former adviser to President Donald Trump will be the first Trump family member to publish a book about his time in the administration. Continue reading at HuffPost
[ HuffPost | 2022-05-02 19:05:29 UTC ]
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John Gleeson’s “The Gotti Wars” is a memoir about what it took to jail America’s star gangster. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-29 20:03:55 UTC ]
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“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.” I’ve always found these words by E.L. Doctorow a compelling argument for the unique power of fiction to enliven the past. Yet when thinking about the lives of people of color in America, you can’t count on... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-04-29 08:49:53 UTC ]
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In “Hilde on the Record: Memoir of a Kid Crime Reporter,” Hilde Lysiak cracks her own case. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-29 04:30:37 UTC ]
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Former NFL player Steve Gleason sells a memoir to Knopf, S&S buys a relationship book from a therapist popular on Instagram, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-04-29 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Dyer's gloriously shape-shifting literary project — intensely perceptive, essayistic memoir — continues with "The Last Days of Roger Federer." Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-04-28 13:00:00 UTC ]
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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 month, we’re featuring Jason Schwartzman, an essayist, and fiction writer, and author of the memoir No One You Know: Strangers... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-04-27 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Rainbow made the nation laugh by setting witty political commentary to Broadway tunes. Now he has a memoir on his rise from theater kid lip-syncing in his bedroom to social media star. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-23 14:00:19 UTC ]
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Mariner buys a murder mystery from Australian comedian Benjamin Stevenson, music producer Mark Ronson sells a memoir of his DJ days to Grand Central, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-04-22 04:00:00 UTC ]
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“Being Deaf assigned me a battle,” said the model, producer and now writer. His memoir braids his life, his family’s legacy and the history of Deaf rights. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-19 17:05:48 UTC ]
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In Kathryn Davis’ new memoir Aurelia, Aurélia life becomes more precious, language more urgent, and grief strikes deep chords. Davis’ husband Eric, an “ecological economist,” died of cancer in 2019, and throughout Aurelia, Aurélia where there is not outright elegy there is elegiac anticipation.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-04-18 08:50:38 UTC ]
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Marie Yovanovitch’s memoir makes a persuasive case for the officials who really did obstruct his agenda. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2022-04-13 09:45:00 UTC ]
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Jefferson’s “Constructing a Nervous System,” a companion to her earlier “Negroland,” explores the materials used to make identity and art. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-12 09:00:05 UTC ]
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