My earliest reading memoryWhen I was five and starting school, I would catch a coach from the Oxfordshire village where I lived. Twice a day I read the little metal plaque screwed... Read more »
The author behind an offensive novel depicting toddler role-play has been convicted but spared jail for penning child abuse material. Lauren Ashley Mastrosa, a 34-year-old former marketing executive for a Christian charity,... Read more »
Winners and judges out of pocket as £20,000 writing awards appear to have closed | Awards and prizes
A competition for new writers that promised a £20,000 prize fund appears to have shut down, leaving winners and judges, including a Booker prize-winning novelist, out of pocket. Established in 2022, the... Read more »
“I’ve had a life and I’ve also had a life as a life writer”: Blake Morrison opens his tour d’horizon of arguably literature’s most expanding and expansive genre with a flash of... Read more »
A new £50,000 writing prize that allows readers to select the shortlist from submitted manuscripts – and rewards them with cash prizes for their involvement – has been launched by the publishing... Read more »
The Polish poet Czesław Miłosz is famously credited with the line: “When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.” In contemporary European literature, a book these days is... 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 »
Beginning I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to write a first sentence so idiosyncratic, so indelible, so entirely your own that it makes people sit up or reach for... Read more »