Writers' careers

Anyone who attended the virtual event in June, when BookBrunch and Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/ announced the winners of this year's US Selfies Book Awards, can testify to the fact that I was completely blindsided when my debut novel L'Origine appeared on the screen as adult fiction winner. I remember being totally speechless (I'm pretty sure I was gaping like a fish). Then came the tears.  Read more

"The biggest con job in academia" - that is how Lucy Ellmann has famously described creative writing degrees. Hanif Kureishi said (ironically, given that he was a teaching writing at Kingston University at the time) that "most [teachers] are going to teach you stuff that is a waste of time".  Read more

This is a sad story. Wait, let me start first with the happy part of the story, since that's relevant to the sad part. The other day, quite unexpectedly, I got a large, thick envelope from Anthem Blue Cross, informing me that I had qualified for health insurance through the Writers' Guild. Hallelujah! This caught me by surprise, to say the least.  Read more

Everything from poetry, short stories, essays and more esoteric forms of writing can now find a home in what has become a welcome and flourishing scene

In 1938 my father, aged 14, was packed onto a crowded train in his hometown of Vienna and sent to England, without his family, on the Kindertransport. The train travelled through the night, passing through Holland, where kind Dutch women waited on the train platform to give the children cakes and hot drinks, until it eventually arrived in Kent.  Read more