Countdown to Wigtown Book Festival
firstwriter.com – Tuesday September 5, 2017
The Wigtown Book Festival is upon us later this month (22 Sept to 1 Oct 2017).
This year's programme contains a host of literary goodies - from Andrew O'Hagan, Bella Bathurst, Iain Sinclair and Andrew Greig (all Sat 23 Sept) to the award-winning Kapka Kassabova (Sun 1 Oct), Dame Denise Mina (Sept 30), Chris Brookmyre (25 Sept) and former Guardian foreign editor Charlie English's acclaimed The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu (Sat 30 Sept) .
The BFG, Skellig, Aubrey ... children’s books boom
theguardian.com – Sunday September 3, 2017
Once upon a time, nine-year-old bookworms used to curl up with Little Women, or burrow under the bedclothes with a torch to read Swallows and Amazons after hours. Childhood reading was an idyll in a walled garden and books forever shaped the landscape of our minds.
DHH Literary Agency to hold second pitching round
thebookseller.com – Saturday September 2, 2017
DHH Literary Agency is holding its second round of pitching sessions for unrepresented writers in November.
With a view to finding new clients, and following its first successful session held in April this year, five agents will be available for a 10-minute slot for an individual writers to pitch their story and receive "honest and valuable" feedback. The pitch sessions will run from 4pm to 7pm on Monday 27th November at Browns on St. Martins Lane in central London.
Akbar to edit online literary magazine for Unbound
thebookseller.com – Friday September 1, 2017
Unbound is launching an editorially-independent online literary magazine dedicated to long-form writing, edited by former Independent literary editor Arifa Akbar, and titled Boundless.
Created in part to counter the diminishing space in traditional media, the magazine will launch this autumn as part of the Unbound website and will focus on "long, well-written pieces" (2,000 to 3,000 words) by authors and critics, covering a broad range of subjects.
Thirteenth short story contest winners announced
firstwriter.com – Thursday August 31, 2017
After much deliberation, firstwriter.com is pleased to announce the winners and special commendations of its Thirteenth International Short Story Contest, which opened in May 2016 and closed on May 1, 2017.
Stephanie Wolfe Murray, publisher – obituary
telegraph.co.uk – Wednesday August 30, 2017
Stephanie Wolfe Murray, who has died aged 76, co-founded the influential Scottish publisher Canongate Books and kept it afloat through regular financial crises for some 25 years.
Though Scottish publishing had a distinguished history in the 19th century, by the early 1970s there were only really two publishers which could accurately be called Scottish: Chambers, which primarily produced dictionaries, and Bartholomew, the mapmakers.
firstwriter.magazine Issue 31: Summer 2017
firstwriter.com – Monday August 28, 2017
firstwriter.com has just announced the launch of the penultimate issue of its long-running literary journal, firstwriter.magazine.
firstwriter.magazine has been published twice a year since 2002, making it probably one of the longest-running online journals on the internet. This 31st issue features the usual mix of quality fiction and poetry from around the world, plus the first chance to see not just the winning story from the Fifteenth International Poetry Competition, but also all ten Special Commendations. You can view the magazine by clicking here.
YA Publisher Allegedly Tricked Best Sellers List In Scheme To Sell The Movie Rights
cinemablend.com – Friday August 25, 2017
YA novels are still big business in the publishing world, but a large part of the reason for that is the frequency with which many of them get adapted as films. It seems one new book may have tried to game the system specifically to get the movie made.This week a book almost nobody had heard of, and even fewer had read, called Handbook for Mortals, found itself atop the New York Times Best Sellers list. Now, it seems the publisher may have used questionable means to get on the list in order to secure funding for the movie version of the book.
Abridged 0 – 51 Wormwood: Submission Call
firstwriter.com – Wednesday August 23, 2017
What if the end does not begin somewhere above our heads, but festers in the lives of individuals. What if it will not drop down from the sky but seep out slowly from the streams that flow under our senses. What if it isn’t colossal, overwhelming and thundering, but microscopic, sneaking and silent. What if we are deafened not by a distant bang but a cancer worming deep in our cells. What if it won’t be thrown at us, in our ignorance, from far far away, but is carried around inside us in tiny electric pieces. What if it is not of some mythological or hypothetical future but of the right now. Not the threat of a coming instant but a present dragging catastrophe.
2018 edition of Writers' Handbook now available to buy
firstwriter.com – Tuesday August 22, 2017
The 2018 edition of firstwriter.com’s bestselling directory for writers has just been launched, and makes the perfect book for anyone searching for literary agents, book publishers, or magazines. It contains over 1,400 listings, including revised and updated listings from the 2017 edition, and nearly 400 brand new entries.
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