Writers' stories

In 2017, we learned that Eleanor Oliphant was completely fine. As you may recall, there was a bestselling novel all about it, titled, appropriately enough, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Soon, a wave of syntactically similar book titles followed, all involving simple sentences containing the female protagonist's name: Evvie Drake started over. Florence Adler swam forever.  Read more

How changing technology motivated a former naval intelligence officer to revisit his dreams of writing fiction.

In my 15 years of teaching English to hundreds of children in various parts of England, there are four books that have been on the curriculum in every school I have found myself in, with no exception: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Animal Farm by George Orwell, An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo.  Read more

Waterstones Children's Laureate Cressida Cowell has revealed the "transformative" impact on the pilot primary schools taking part in her "Life-changing Libraries" initiative, including an increase in a love of reading, motivation towards learning, well-being and feelings of self-worth.  Read more

Another May has come and gone without BookExpo or any other in-person, industrywide spring show taking its place. As the pandemic eases, more and more publishing and publishing-related conferences, meetings, and fairs are moving from online-only events to either in-person or hybrid affairs.  Read more