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purely to get published; A Place of Greater Safety emerged only when she contributed to a Guardian piece about writers’ unpublished first novels.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 ]
In “I Came All This Way to Meet You,” the novelist reveals how far she’s traveled — and how many obstacles she’s cleared — to get where she is now. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-01-11 10:00:05 UTC ]
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In “Lost & Found,” Kathryn Schulz explores the confluence of death, love and hope. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-01-11 10:00:05 UTC ]
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At the Guardian, Jami Attenberg, author of the recent memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You, reflects on how a key moment of rejection allowed her to carve out her own path as a writer. “I’m old enough to realise that there is one more important part to carving out your creative life: … The... Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2022-01-10 21:30:10 UTC ]
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of the memoir "Lost and Found" unpacks the meaning and importance of joy and grief — and conjuctions. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-01-10 14:00:30 UTC ]
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A messay is a combination of memoir and essay. But something beautiful happens when you smash these words together. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-01-10 11:38:00 UTC ]
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Canbury Press has landed the first memoir by a Uyghur survivor of China’s "re-education" camps. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2022-01-10 06:03:11 UTC ]
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Bernstein’s memoir “Chasing History” is a personal and affectionate look at the past, when journalism was thriving. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-01-07 20:51:59 UTC ]
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Interviews Victoria Chang’s new collection, Dear Memory, expands the field of the memoir for readers to explore a full-color archive of family photos and historical documents collaged between lines of poetry and letters. It prompts us to ask, with her,... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-01-05 19:50:39 UTC ]
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Kathryn Schulz’s memoir places the totalizing experience of loss on a continuum with the summons of romantic and even religious love. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-01-04 20:12:44 UTC ]
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Looking for great new reads in the new year? Add these 2022 historical fiction books to your TBR right now, including The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-01-04 11:30:00 UTC ]
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For those of us who want to become real writers—whatever that means—the countless resources available can feel a bit dry and uninspired, ranging from tired but true clichés to well-lauded craft books (Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir on Craft sits dustily on my shelf). Many of us find... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2021-12-31 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Telling your story in a book is hard enough. But what if it ends up on screen? Adam Kay, writer of This Is Going to Hurt, and Dolly Alderton, who penned Everything I Know About Love, relive the shocksMore cultural highlights of 2022Most people find seeing themselves on screen distinctly... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-12-29 14:00:23 UTC ]
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The unsparing observer of US culture, politics and public life won huge acclaim for her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking• Read Alex Clark’s interview with Joan Didion from February 2021• Obituary: Joan DidionJoan Didion, the eminent journalist, author and anthropologist of contemporary... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-12-23 17:19:56 UTC ]
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Ai Weiwei’s memoir “1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows” pushes back against the Chinese government’s efforts to silence him and his poet father. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2021-12-20 22:31:48 UTC ]
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From Franzen to Kidneygate (with a prolonged pit stop in the land of Supply Chain Issues), we’ve finally reached the end of the Biggest Literary Stories of the Year. Against reading historical fiction to learn history: Juhea Kim considers how the onus of writing educational fiction falls... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-12-20 11:30:45 UTC ]
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Serpent's Tail has bagged a post-apocalyptic novel and a memoir from 2020 Goldsmiths Prize winner M John Harrison, who is leaving his long-term publisher Gollancz after 40 years. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-12-19 23:45:16 UTC ]
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White went from the streets of Baltimore to the philharmonic. In his memoir "I'm Possible," he tells the story of how he transformed his life. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-12-18 13:00:13 UTC ]
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Stephanie Land’s best-selling memoir inspired the popular Netflix series. She’s not done fighting for people navigating the red tape of poverty. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-12-16 10:00:03 UTC ]
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Nine Eight Books, the music imprint of Bonnier Books UK, has acquired the “compelling and pertinent memoir” from 1960s soul legend P P Arnold. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-12-15 22:10:47 UTC ]
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The beloved Guardian writer finished Holding Tight, Letting Go before she died of cancer earlier this yearA memoir by the late journalist Sarah Hughes, who died from cancer earlier this year, will be published next March, tackling topics from planning your own funeral to the importance of trashy... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-12-13 14:25:04 UTC ]
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