The 2005 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year
The shortlist for the 2005 prize was announced recently. My favourite competition of the year is run by columnist Horace Bent in the Bookseller (the UK book trade weekly) with input from dedicated odd title hunters from all over the world. Read more
Chaired by the writer and journalist John Walsh, a panel of four publishing insiders deliberated the thorny subject of how to get published in front of a large, well-informed, near-capacity audience of writers at the London Book Fair. Read more
The Masterclass on Historical Fiction at the London Book Fair involved two of the most successful authors in the genre, Bernard Cornwall, author of the Sharpe novels and the Arthurian trilogy, and Philippa Gregory, who first made her name in the field with A Respectable Trade and has more recentlywritten a series of Tudornovels. Read more
Report from the Annual Writers’ Conference in Winchester
In the week that brought the news that the average age of authors whose books were in the US bestseller lists was a little over fifty, Fay Weldon in her plenary address to the 25th Writers’ Conference at Winchester had more good news for mature writers. Read more
Nick Webb, publisher turned author, comments on what GoogleWorld might mean for authors
When I first turned to writing I resolved to resist the personality disorders that decades of dealing with authors made me associate with the species. You know: insecurity, jealous rage, plangent whingeing, emotional neediness, and - above all - endless anxiety about money. Read more
Last week saw the launch of the Poetry ArchiveOnline archive with recordings of over 130 living poets' voices, mostly from the UK; you can listen to excerpts on their wonderful site or go to www.poetrybookshoponline.com to buy hour-long recordings on CD. www.poetryarchive.org a major initiative to record poets’ voices and to preserve their own readings of their work. The new website is at www.poetryarchive.org, where you can listen to the 80 poets who have so far been recorded by the Archive, now the world's premier online collection of recordings of poets read Read more
Poetry lovers who are within reach of London can look forward to an annual treat in January. The poets shortlisted for the annual T S Eliot Prize for the best poetry collection published in the UK during 2005 will be reading on Sunday the 15th January. Read more
‘I always quote Kurt Vonnegut. He said in the early part of his career he was dismissed as a science fiction writer and that critics tend to put genre books, including sci-fi, in the bottom drawer of their desk... It's true. I get the New York Times every Sunday. In 37 novels, I've never had a stand-alone review. I'm always in the crime round-up.
A survey of 787 members of the Society of Authors (SoA) has found that a third of translators and a quarter of illustrators have lost work to generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Translators are also more likely to use AI to support their work, with 37% of respondents saying they have done so, followed by 25% of non-fiction writers.
The author Lynne Reid Banks, known for her novel The L-Shaped Room and her children's book series The Indian in the Cupboard, has died at the age of 94.
I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn't want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are ... yech. Read more
Until we have a mechanism to test for artificial intelligence, writers need a tool to maintain trust in their work. So I decided to be completely open with my readers