How to enter The Sunday Post’s short story writing competition
sundaypost.com – Sunday July 9, 2023
The word is out. Amateur writers across the country should have pens and laptops at the ready because today The Sunday Post launches its inaugural Short Story Writing Competition, and we want to hear from you.
Can you weave a captivating tale? Do you marvel at where your imagination takes you? Do the characters you conjure take on a life of their own? If the answer is yes, then this is your moment. Whether you’re unemployed or a student, a retired granny, grandpa or working mum, with disabilities or without, or just downright frustrated at not fulfilling your literary dream, now is your chance.
And we’ve lined up a great team of experts to cast their eyes over your creations. Our judges are the king of feel-good fiction, No.1 Ladies Detective Agency author Alexander McCall Smith, queen of romantic comedy Jenny Colgan, and thriller royalty, Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival founders Lin Anderson and Alex Gray. Also on the judging panel is Sunday Post and P.S magazine Books Editor Sally McDonald.
Ex-Canelo director Riccardi joins Kate Nash as literary agent
thebookseller.com – Monday July 3, 2023
Francesca Riccardi has joined Kate Nash Literary Agency as a literary agent, building a list in fiction.
Riccardi was previously sales and marketing director at Canelo where she was instrumental in driving the company’s growth into audio and print sales alongside the e-book business.
During her time at Canelo, Riccardi also launched the flagship Canelo Crime imprint and worked with authors directly to achieve their writing ambitions.
Riccardi started her publishing career at RNIB, where she worked on transcribing books into accessible formats, and has worked previously at Atlantic Books, where she was recognised as a Bookseller Rising Star in 2017, as well as at Constable and Robinson and HarperCollins.
Culture Creative Entertainment Hires Netflix’s Sherley Ibarra As Literary Agent
uk.news.yahoo.com – Wednesday June 21, 2023
Culture Creative Entertainment, the nascent talent agency founded by former Abrams Artists Agency agents Brad Rosenfeld, Paul Weitzman and Karen Kirkland, has hired a new literary agent.
The company has hired Sherley Ibarra, who joins from Netflix, where she was Manager of Animation Outreach & Engagement. Ibarra was at the streamer for over three years, having previously been Vice-President of Creative Talent Development & Outreach at Nickelodeon.
At CCE, she will represent a diverse roster of talent working across TV series and features in both live-action and animation.
I was sacked for writing about trans censorship
unherd.com – Tuesday June 20, 2023
For a quarter of a century, on and off, Melbourne’s “quality” daily newspaper The Age not only published my words — it was my intellectual home.
I had joined the paper’s staff around the turn of the century as a trainee journalist, progressing to social affairs reporter, senior writer, leader writer and, most recently, weekly columnist. For the most part, my views aligned with the paper’s superego, which fluctuates between soft Left and small “l” liberal. And there was always space for dissent, even when my opinions sharply diverged from The Age consensus — more on that soon.
About two years ago, my harmonious relationship with the paper began to deteriorate. The tension reached its climax last week when the editor, Patrick Elligett, sacked me as a columnist. The breakdown in trust was down to one issue: gender-identity politics, the trans debate — or severe lack thereof.
My dismissal was linked to a feature I wrote on youth gender transition that had been commissioned by a previous editor, Gay Alcorn, and which Elligett had refused to run. In response, I told Elligett that I intended to publish the piece on my new Substack and would disclose that he rejected it. He looked uncomfortable, but said The Age would take it on the chin.
And so, early this month I published the feature, announcing to the world that if they wanted to know why the piece was rejected, they would have to ask Elligett himself. A standing army of gender sceptics on Twitter did just that, under the hashtag “gutless” . This can’t have been pleasant for Elligett. But he attributed the sacking to another remark in my launch statement where I flagged that in future posts I’d be writing on gender-identity politics more broadly, “without the copy being rendered unreadable by a committee of woke journalists redacting words they deem incendiary, such as ‘male’”. Elligett responded: “Obviously we can’t have our columnists publicly disparaging the publication like that so we won’t be commissioning further columns from you.”
U.K. Writers Guild, Music Union Set Out AI Concerns
variety.com – Wednesday July 12, 2023
The U.K. Writers Guild has published its policy on artificial intelligence, setting out the challenges and potential benefits of the technology for writers.
On the back of a recent survey organized by the Guild, which found 65% of respondents believed AI would reduce their writing income, the org. has published “Writers and AI: A policy position statement.”
Among the concerns the policy document sets out are worries about fewer job opportunities, pay, copyright infringement and lack of regulation. The Guild suggests that although AI is not yet “sophisticated” enough to mimic professional writers, “this is a likely future scenario.”
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