What We're Reading – October 2019

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 of whom identify as female, living in London. I’ve enjoyed getting to know them through my reading and seeing how their lives are linked or overlap in different ways. What I found particularly interesting about this book is how each character responds in their own way to the universal questions of self and identity, particularly the tensions between personal, public and political gender discourse and the effect it has on the relationships the characters have with others. This feels like a very important book, and a must-read if you’re interested in what’s happening in UK fiction today.Rachel Stevens, Director LiteratureCommon People - An Anthology of Working-class Writers (ed Kit de Waal). An exceptional collection of essays, poems, memoir and short stories celebrating working-class life, culture and literature. There are many highlights, but I especially recommend Lisa McInnery’s essay ‘Working Class: An Escape Manual’, which considers how working-class writers and artists are co-opted into other identities when they achieve success. Debut author Adam Sharp’s ‘Play’, a memoir of his relationship with a substance-addicted father, is poignant and deftly handled - he’s a writer to... Continue reading at 'British Council global'

[ British Council global | 2019-10-30 09:49:28 UTC ]

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Britney Spears Reveals The Heartbreaking Reason She Shaved Her Head In 2007

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How a Collective of Incarcerated Writers Published an Anthology From Prison

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[ Electric Literature | 2023-10-16 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Halloween Short Fiction: 9 Short Stories to Get You Ready for Spooky Season

These Halloween short stories are free to read online! They're deliciously unsettling, genre-bending, emotional, and even humorous. Continue reading at Book Riot

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An Epidemic of Loneliness In A Constantly Connected World

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Book Deals: Week of October 16, 2023

George Stephanopoulos sells a history of the White House Situation Room to Grand Central, Random House buys a memoir from Salman Rushdie, and more. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

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The Protestant Sleep Ethic

A recent memoir considers how much we concede when we regard rest as a call to judgment. Continue reading at The Atlantic

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Salman Rushdie Announces Memoir About Being Stabbed

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Tobias Wolff Will Receive Our 2024 Hadada Award

“His memoirs, novels, and short stories express, in infinite variety, the human struggle to reconcile the truth we wish for with the one we get.” Continue reading at The Paris Review

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Salman Rushdie’s memoir of the attempt on his life will be published next year.

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Salman Rushdie to Write Memoir About Stabbing Attack

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Salman Rushdie announces memoir, Knife, about being stabbed in 2022

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Showing Up Every Day: A Conversation with Dewaine Farria, by Matt Gallagher

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Revisiting The Brownies’ Book, a Magazine for Black Children Published by W.E.B. Du Bois

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Pratchett power: from lost stories to new adaptations, how the late Discworld author lives on

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October is for Horror Fans! Here are 8 Scarily Good New Releases

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