In 2018 Daisy Johnson was the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted for the Booker prize, for her debut novel Everything Under, a gender-fluid reimagining of the Oedipus myth involving canal boat communities... Read more »
Just as I am about to interview this year’s Women’s prize winner, debut American novelist Virginia Evans, at the party on a drizzly evening in a leafy London square, we are interrupted... Read more »
In 1845 British citizens and companies were already legally prohibited from owning or buying enslaved people overseas, yet that year 385 captives were “transferred” to a British mining company in Brazil named... Read more »
My earliest reading memoryAsking my mom if she could stop reading my bedtime book to me and just let me read it on my own, since I felt she was going too... Read more »
Matt Giles, the thirtysomething protagonist of The Long Shoe, is having a run of bad luck. Shortly after losing his job as a bathroom salesman, he learns that he and his girlfriend... Read more »
A Long Game by Elizabeth McCracken review – here’s how to really write your novel | Creative writing
Trope, POV, backstory, character arc. In the 30 years since I was a student of that benign, pipe-smoking, elbow-patched man of letters Malcolm Bradbury, the private language of creative writing workshops has taken over the world.... Read more »
The American author Louis Sachar’s most celebrated book, 1998’s YA novel Holes, was a huge word-of-mouth success on both sides of the Atlantic. Its short, punchy chapters tell the story of plump,... Read more »
America’s unseen book bans: the long history of censorship in prisons May 09 2024 Tens of thousands of books are banned in US prisons, in an often arbitrary process that limits education... Read more »