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purely to get published; A Place of Greater Safety emerged only when she contributed to a Guardian piece about writers’ unpublished first novels.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 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a poll to find the nation’s favourite historical novel. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-08 03:53:44 UTC ]
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Penguin Ireland will publish New Zealand rugby union coach Joe Schmidt’s memoir later this month. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-06 02:38:57 UTC ]
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Tori Amos—synesthete musical prodigy, RAINN activist, and one of the most iconic singer-songwriters of the 1990s (easily the greatest musical decade)—is releasing a new, politically-themed memoir entitled Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Courage. The book, Amos’ first since... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-11-05 21:44:52 UTC ]
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In the middle of Carmen Maria Machado’s new memoir In the Dream House, CARMEN, stylized in all caps like a play script, sits across from the woman with whom she’s been in an abusive relationship (THE WOMAN IN THE DREAM HOUSE). The scene is set (“the curtain rises”) and we’re shown, “the house... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2019-11-05 12:00:26 UTC ]
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“WHAT IS DIFFICULT is not impossible.” Anne Boyer both writes and proves this maxim in The Undying, her crystalline memoir of illness and the hard knowledge that illness provides. The Undying engages with art from Aelius Aristides to John Donne to Audre Lorde, within an account of the author’s... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-04 20:00:59 UTC ]
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Val Kilmer’s memoir lands at a Big Five house, 'Dead Man Walking' goes graphic, the screenwriter of The Jerk sells a thriller, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-11-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Katy Waldman reviews Carmen Maria Machado’s ”In the Dream House,“ a formally inventive memoir that recounts the author’s experience with an abusive relationship. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2019-10-31 17:04:01 UTC ]
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The book doesn’t offer a clear-eyed view of who the singer really was — he would have hated that. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2019-10-30 14:42:51 UTC ]
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Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine EvaristoSince studying Lara as a student, I have been a fan of Bernardine Evaristo’s work, and am delighted to see her win the Booker Prize this year. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of twelve black characters with different backgrounds and experiences, most... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-10-30 09:49:28 UTC ]
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Carmen Maria Machado follows up her acclaimed collection of stories, “Her Body and Other Parties,” with a memoir about her frightening relationship with another woman while in graduate school. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-10-29 19:27:21 UTC ]
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JAQUIRA DÍAZ’S FIRST BOOK — the memoir Ordinary Girls, published by Algonquin Books on October 29 — lyrically chronicles a childhood and early adulthood marked by pain and chaos but also by joy and celebration. Díaz grew up, first, in one of Puerto Rico’s roughest neighborhoods and then amid... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-29 12:30:43 UTC ]
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Author Timothy J. Hillegonds shares three ideas on how to determine what to include and what to leave out of a memoir so that it supports the main themes of the book. The post But This Really Happened: What to Include and Leave Out of a Memoir by Timothy Hillegonds appeared first on Writer's... Continue reading at Writer's Digest
[ Writer's Digest | 2019-10-28 15:03:11 UTC ]
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ABC’s Black-ish spinoff joins a new memoir by Thomas Chatterton Williams in presenting a seemingly enlightened but ahistorical view of race. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2019-10-26 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Duras’s body of work is a reminder that it’s okay to press send, to publish your drafts.” On Marguerite Duras, proto-internet essayist. | Lit Hub Memoir “Space flight is not being powered by people doing reasonable things.” Peter Ward explores the fraught history (and inevitable future) of space... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-26 10:30:56 UTC ]
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Stop whatever it is you’re doing and pay attention to me because I have, just this morning, stumbled upon some joyous, and potentially game-changing, literary news: Val Kilmer is releasing a memoir. Yes, friends, according to Publishers Weekly, Simon & Schuster will publish I’m Your... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-10-25 16:13:04 UTC ]
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Looking for your next favorite book? Check out these new historical fiction books, full of beautiful prose, dynamic characters, and captivating settings. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-10-25 10:39:52 UTC ]
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“Little Weirds,” a new collection by the actress and comedian, isn’t the funny memoir you might have expected. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-10-25 09:00:27 UTC ]
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Chatto & Windus has triumphed in a hotly-contested eight-way auction to publish an "extraordinarily brave" memoir about faith, loss and addiction. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-23 09:08:05 UTC ]
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Historical fiction writer Ben Kane has signed a three-book deal with Orion Fiction for a new series of novels exploring Richard the Lionheart. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-22 16:48:55 UTC ]
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Head of Zeus has picked up a memoir of Belfast by poet and writer Ciaran Carson, who passed away earlier this month. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-22 01:49:57 UTC ]
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