‘There is joy, and there is rage’: the new generation of novelists writing about motherhood

From the shock and awe of labour to domestic isolation, a wave of recent novels captures the transformative nature of being a motherThey say nothing prepares you. Before having my baby, I approached the literature of motherhood as though I were about to sit an exam. If my studies tempered the shock of birth and early parenthood, then I didn’t notice. The sheer physical and emotive force of the experience left me profoundly shaken. Words felt insufficient. And yet I kept reading – everything I could get my hands on. I wanted answers. I wanted to feel recognised. I wanted this untranslatable experience to be translated into language. Most of all, I think, I wanted restitution for all the maternal stories that had been left untold by centuries of silencing and minimising, not just for myself, but for all of us.Books about motherhood come in waves: the recent spate only the latest in a long line of literary endeavours. In the 1950s there was Shirley Jackson’s Life Among the Savages. The 1960s wave saw Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, alongside Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique; the 1970s The Women’s Room by Marilyn French, Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born, and In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker. In the 1980s writing about motherhood became even more transgressive and imaginative, with Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. The early 2000s saw an... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2024-01-20 11:00:01 UTC ]
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Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists

‘The issue was the first of its kind. Trust me, it said. I know what I am talking about. These young writers are the future of literature. Watch. History will prove me right.’ A history of the list, with reflections from Bill Buford and other editors. The post <em>Granta</em>’s... Continue reading at Granta

[ Granta | 2023-03-21 19:02:26 UTC ]
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Adobe is bringing generative AI features to Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro

Adobe’s suite of photo and video editing software has long leveraged the assistance of machine intelligence to help its human users do their jobs, having employed the Sensei AI system for more than a decade to power features like Neural Filters in Photoshop or Acrobat's Liquid Mode. On Tuesday,... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2023-03-21 13:00:34 UTC ]
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Richard Milward: ‘I hid my writing like a secret vice’

The novelist on his latest book, a Charles Manson-inspired work written in slang, his love of the band Mogwai and the trials of sorting post for Royal MailRichard Milward, 38, grew up in Middlesbrough and lives in London. He is the author of three previous novels: Apples, published when he was... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-03-18 18:00:17 UTC ]
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AI-generated images from text can't be copyrighted, US government rules

Any images that are produced by giving a text prompt to current generative AI models, such as Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, cannot be copyrighted in the US. That's according to the US Copyright Office (USCO), which has equated such prompts to a buyer giving directions to a commissioned artist.... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2023-03-16 17:42:43 UTC ]
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Tracey Rose Peyton: Exploring Six Stories of Motherhood for Enslaved Women

Tracey Rose Peyton is the guest. She is the author of the debut novel Night Wherever We Go, available from Ecco Books. Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!  From the episode: Brad Listi: This book really brought into focus for me the awful risks and costs of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-03-03 09:53:42 UTC ]
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Okay, so you can write books with AI. But why bother?

As was perhaps inevitable, ChatGPT—the free chatbot created by OpenAI that has been ruffling feathers ever since it was launched in November—has now spawned “a boom in AI-written e-books on Amazon,” according to Greg Bensinger at Reuters. Bensinger counted over 200 e-books in Amazon’s Kindle... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-02-22 17:10:52 UTC ]
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The Ghostwriter typewriter brings generative AI to the printed page

Running from 1992 through 1995, Ghostwriter, the beloved PBS children’s television show, followed a diverse group of friends as they solved mysteries around their Brooklyn neighborhood with the help of their haunted typewriter, a cursed item possessed by the trapped soul of a murdered runaway... Continue reading at Engadget

[ Engadget | 2023-02-16 17:00:16 UTC ]
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Springer Nature Acquires TooWrite for Its Writing Researchers

The 'research solutions' division of Springer Nature acquires the TooWrite platform, still in development, for research writers. The post Springer Nature Acquires TooWrite for Its Writing Researchers appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives

[ Publishing Perspectives | 2023-02-14 18:04:52 UTC ]
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Catapult to Shutter Online Magazine, Writing Classes

The decision to suspend the publisher's editorial and educational arms will "consolidate our efforts around our book publishing program," the publisher said in a statement. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-02-14 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Women’s prize to launch annual award for women’s non-fiction writing

The Women’s Prize Trust hopes to make the first award in 2024, after research showed female writers were far less likely than men to be reviewed or win prizes The Women’s prize is to launch a non-fiction award to sit alongside its long-running fiction prize, in response to research that found... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-02-08 08:00:10 UTC ]
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Why Denise Crittendon Won’t Write About Violence

Denise Crittendon’s debut science fiction novel, Where It Rains In Color, leads us to the planet of Swazembi, a blazing, color-rich utopia and famous vacation center of the galaxy. Set far in the future, this idyllic, peace-loving world sees no real trouble. But Lileala’s perfect, pampered... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-02-03 09:51:26 UTC ]
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The book world needs practical dreamers. Enter publisher-novelist Martin Riker

Micro-publisher Martin Riker has just published a novel of his own, 'The Guest Lecture,' that proves fiction can be experimental and rigorous at once. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2023-01-26 14:00:20 UTC ]
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For Aleksandar Hemon, Writing is a Search for a Form That Doesn’t Yet Exist

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and three books of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award;... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2023-01-24 09:53:24 UTC ]
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Christine Ma-Kellams Wants to Survive What Happens in Your Writing

In our monthly 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 time, we’re talking to Christine Ma-Kellams, who’s teaching an online eight-week fiction workshop. From improving narrative... Continue reading at Electric Literature

[ Electric Literature | 2023-01-20 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Raban, travel writer and novelist, dies aged 80

The British author, who lived in the US, blended memoir and travelogue in books that were often inspired by the seaJonathan Raban, the British travel writer, critic and novelist known for his candid accounts of travelling the world in books such as Passage to Juneau and Coasting, has died aged... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-01-18 08:53:25 UTC ]
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Digital Book World 2023: The Future of AI Writing and Audio

According to multiple presenters at the Digital Book World conference, ChatGPT has potential to remake the way people write and streamline production and editing, while AI voice replication promises affordable audiobook adaptations. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-01-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Digital Book World 2023: The Future of AI Writing and Audio

According to multiple presenters at the Digital Book World conference, ChatGPT has potential to remake the way people write and streamline production and editing, while AI voice replication promises affordable audiobook adaptations. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-01-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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A romance novelist came back to life. Angry fans say she faked her death

Scandal and despair hit the romance community when Susan Meachen was purportedly bullied into suicide. Was it a hoax?In 2020 the tightly knit and passionate world of self-published romance literature was shocked by the news that the novelist Susan Meachen, following bullying by other writers,... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-01-14 10:00:06 UTC ]
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Kelcey Ervick Brings an Athlete’s Discipline to Writing

In one of my favorite pages of The Keeper, Kelcey Ervick‘s graphic memoir about her time as a goalie in the early days of Title IX, Ervick is, at this point, no longer a teenage soccer player. Time has passed, and she’s now a wife and a mother trying to take herself seriously as a … The post... Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2023-01-11 11:00:04 UTC ]
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In his own write: Prince Harry’s ghostwriter is so famous that George Clooney made a film of his life

JR Moehringer, biographer to stars such as Andre Agassi and a doyen of the genre, was an obvious choice for the Duke of SussexWhen Prince Harry chose to work with ghostwriter JR Moehringer on his institution-shaking memoir, Spare, he was not taking half measures. The American writer and Pulitzer... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-01-07 18:42:05 UTC ]
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