Buchwald Adds Sola Fasehun and Tim Patricia As Literary Agents
deadline.com – Saturday January 25, 2020
Buchwald has hired Sola Fasehun and Tim Patricia to its motion picture and television literary departments, respectively.
Fasehun got her start working under Academy Award-winning producer Michael Phillips at Lighthouse Productions. She then spent six years as a film production, sales, and distribution consultant at Submarine Entertainment/Deluxe. She joins Buchwald from UTA, where, as a member of their team, she helped spearhead the agency’s Diversity initiative.
APA Agency Signs Agreement With The WGA – Update
deadline.com – Wednesday January 22, 2020
UPDATED with WGA and ATA statements and more details: Another full-service agency and Association of Talent Agents member, APA, has reached a deal with the WGA. The agency, which immediately will resume its representation of writers, also said it will bring the Television and Motion Picture Literary businesses together under the banner of APA Scripted Literary.
APA is the latest member of the Association of Talent Agents to break ranks and sign the guild’s new franchise agreement. Its deal comes just days after fellow full-service agency Gersh also signed with the WGA. The other four association members to make WGA deals are Buchwald, also a full-service agency; literary boutiques the Rothman Brecher Ehrich Livingston agency and the Kaplan Stahler Agency; and Pantheon. Non-ATA member Verve, also lit-focused, was the first mid-size agency to reach an agreement with the WGA last May.
UK and Europe writing award with £6,000 prize opens for submissions
falmouthpacket.co.uk – Tuesday January 21, 2020
Falmouth University is welcoming submissions for a writing award with a prize of £6,000.
The 2020 Nick Darke Writers' Award is now open for submissions.
Funded by the university's Academy of Music and Theatre Arts (AMATA) and School of Communication, the award is open to all writers in the UK and Europe aged 16 and over.
A MONSTER CALLS Inspires 'The Monster Challenge' Creative Writing Challenge
broadwayworld.com – Monday January 20, 2020
Calling young aspiring writers! This spring, Sally Cookson's critically acclaimed stage production of A Monster Calls heads to Coventry as part of a brand new UK tour, and to celebrate, the company has launched a creative writing competition open to young people aged 10-25.
Based on the award-winning children's novel by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd, A Monster Calls tells the story of 13-year-old Conor O'Malley, who is visited by a monster while struggling to cope with his mother's illness. Over the course of several nights, the monster tells Conor stories that help him to face up to his fears.
Which best-selling book series are penned by more than one writer?
news.sky.com – Sunday January 19, 2020
Lee Child has quit the Jack Reacher series and asked his brother to write them - so which other authors have done a similar thing?
The author of the best-selling Jack Reacher novels has revealed he is stepping aside and letting his brother write them.
After the move by Lee Child - whose real name is James Grant - Sky News takes a look at authors who have used other writers to take over their bestselling series.
Book Publishers Settle Copyright Battle With Audible Over Captioning Service
mediapost.com – Thursday January 16, 2020
Seven book publishers have settled a lawsuit with Amazon's Audible over a captioning service that could allow people to read along while listening to books, according to court papers filed this week.
Settlement terms have not yet been revealed. U.S. District Court Judge Valerie Caproni in the Southern District of New York, who presided over the litigation, officially dismissed the matter Tuesday.
The move brings an end to a high-profile copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Hachette, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster and Chronicle.
They argued in a complaint filed in federal court last August that Audible's captioning service could directly compete with their own physical books and e-books. Hachette and the others alleged the service would infringe their rights by “taking copyrighted works and repurposing them.”
Submissions are now open for the 2020 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize
qmul.ac.uk – Thursday January 16, 2020
From 15 January to 1 June 2020, the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize will be receiving submissions from around the world. The competition is open to any writers who have not yet published a book-length work in their chosen genre, regardless of age, gender, nationality, or background. The grand prize of £1,000 is available in each category: Fiction, Life Writing, and Poetry.
In addition to the cash prize, winners and shortlisted writers may be eligible for a Chapter and Verse Award, courtesy of The Literary Consultancy, worth £2,000, or Free Reads mentoring, to support them as they grow their writing careers.
Children/YA Sales Rose, Adult Sales Fell in October
publishersweekly.com – Wednesday January 15, 2020
Sales in the children/young adult category jumped 20.9% in October over October 2018, according to the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot program. The increase was led by the performance of Wrecking Ball, which helped lift sales of hardcovers, where sales rose 29.3% over October 2018. Sales of paperbacks increased 21.7%. For the first 10 months of 2019, sales in the children/young adult segment were up 9.9% over the comparable period of 2018.
Sales of adult books did not perform nearly as well as children/young adult. In October, sales fell 3.7% as sales of all formats except trade paperback (up 3.2%) and downloadable audio (ahead 16.3%) fell. The mass market paperback category had a particularly bad month, with sales tumbling 38% compared to October 2018.
Rebus author Ian Rankin to chair this year's Harrogate crime writing festival
yorkpress.co.uk – Tuesday January 14, 2020
Ian Rankin, best-selling author of the Inspector Rebus novels, has been unveiled as the chair of this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate.
The author, who has sold more than 20 million books, has been charged with pulling together a “most wanted” list of guest authors and speakers to headline the four-day event at Harrogate’s Old Swan Hotel from July 23-26.
Helen Donkin, the Harrogate International Festivals Literature Festival Manager, said: “Ian has been one of the crime writing festival’s greatest supporters and we are delighted that he has agreed to become the 2020 Programming Chair."
Tyler Perry slammed by fans after admitting he has no writer’s room
pagesix.com – Thursday January 9, 2020
It ain’t easy being Madea.
Tyler Perry admitted this week that he’s written several of his plays, films and television shows solo, apparently hoping to inspire others with his work ethic. Many fans missed that sentiment, however, and called out the studio owner for not hiring writers.
“So, I don’t know if you know, this but all shows on television have a writer’s room,” Perry, 50, said in an Instagram clip Monday. “Most of the time, they’re 10 people, 12, whatever, that write on these television shows. Well, I have no writer’s room. Nobody writes any of my work. I write it all. Why am I telling [you] this? I wrote all of these scripts by myself in 2019. What’s my point? Work ethic!”
But rather than be inspired, many of Perry’s followers took issue with what they saw as his refusal to employ writers who could bring fresh perspectives to his work.
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