The Poetry Swindon Festival begins next week
firstwriter.com – Friday September 23, 2016
Spitfires, a goblin circus and complete nonsense - it can only be the Poetry Swindon Festival.
29 September sees the start of the community festival, kicking off with Poems Aloud, hosted by Hilda Sheehan (we've heard the Mayor of Swindon will be in attendance, reading and bringing his big grin and enthusiasm for poetry, so we're feeling very grown up!).
On Saturday 1 October, Poetry Swindon celebrates the 100th anniversary of Dada, the influential ‘nonsense’ art movement, with anti-verse workshops and open mic with the Tin Women.
Bestselling author Jojo Moyes is offering up her cottage as a free writing den
metro.co.uk – Wednesday September 21, 2016
If you’ve ever had dreams of swishing around a cottage in a silk dressing gown as you make a cup of coffee before setting down to write your first novel, then your luck may be in.
Bestselling author Jojo Moyes is offering up her cottage to one writer for a week, to help them escape the rat race and either get started on, or finish up their next literary masterpiece.
US publishers' sales decline 2.7% in first quarter
thebookseller.com – Wednesday September 21, 2016
American publishers experienced a 2.7% decline in revenues in the first quarter of 2016 to $2.14bn (£1.65bn) compared to the same period in 2015, according to data released yesterday (20th September) by the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
Natasha Fairweather joins RCW
thebookseller.com – Tuesday September 20, 2016
Natasha Fairweather, currently at United Agents, is set to join Rogers, Coleridge & White (RCW) in October.
Fairweather will be joining the board and taking up a senior role at Rogers, Coleridge & White.
She began her career as a literary agent at Curtis Brown in 1989, returning to the profession in 1999, at which point Fairweather joined AP Watt after a seven-year hiatus spent living and working in Jerusalem and Moscow. There Fairweather built a list of non-fiction writers including politicians, historians and journalists, and also represents a growing number of prize winning novelists. In 2012, when AP Watt was acquired by United Agents, Natasha became co-head of the newly-amalgamated book department.
‘The Irish Times’ travel writing competition
irishtimes.com – Saturday September 17, 2016
For the second year, The Irish Times, in conjunction with the Travel Department, is inviting aspiring writers to write a travel feature for consideration for publication in The Irish Times Magazine. The author of the best entry, as selected by our judges, will have their article published in print in The Irish Times Magazine, along with a travel-writing assignment abroad, also for publication in the Magazine.
Algorithms Could Save Book Publishing—But Ruin Novels
wired.com – Friday September 16, 2016
JODIE ARCHER HAD always been puzzled by the success ofThe Da Vinci Code. She’d worked for Penguin UK in the mid-2000s, when Dan Brown’s thriller had become a massive hit, and knew there was no way marketing alone would have led to 80 million copies sold. So what was it, then? Something magical about the words that Brown had strung together? Dumb luck? The questions stuck with her even after she left Penguin in 2007 to get a PhD in English at Stanford. There she met Matthew L. Jockers, a cofounder of the Stanford Literary Lab, whose work in text analysis had convinced him that computers could peer into books in a way that people never could.
How Dylan Thomas's writing shed inspired Roald Dahl
bbc.co.uk – Wednesday September 14, 2016
Both are world-famous authors who wrote some of their best known works in their sheds. But, as Roald Dahl's centenary is celebrated across the country, his widow reveals how heavily the children's author was influenced by Dylan Thomas's hut when building his own.
Steve Atkinson: HighTide started on a wave of changes in new writing
whatsonstage.com – Tuesday September 13, 2016
HighTide turns ten this year and the UK's premier new writing festival could not be in better shape. Since beginning in the small market town of Halesworth in Suffolk, they've championed the likes of Adam Brace, Sam Holcroft, Joel Horwood and Nick Payne, often staging debuts from those writers well before theatres like the National, Almeida and the Royal Court pick them up. As co-founder of the festival, director Steve Atkinson has been instrumental in pushing the festival artistically so it now stands as one of the most important new writing events in the UK calendar. Now, after they open at the festival's home of Aldeburgh, HighTide plays tour up and down the country, bringing bright, dynamic theatre voices to the rest of the world.
From Zero to Hero: the next generation of passionate publishers
thebookseller.com – Tuesday September 6, 2016
So it's back to school this week, and as relieved parents return to their desks, there will undoubtedly be some speculation about whether the complex summer holiday juggling might be made just a bit easier by running your own business. While flexibility might be one reason often cited for setting up a new business on your own, there are clearly many more complex motivations for making the leap. Some of the most exciting new publishing ventures to launch in recent years have had very varied motivations for getting started, but there are certainly some themes emerging across this next generation of publishers.
A Rough Six Months for Big Book Publishers
publishersweekly.com – Saturday September 3, 2016
The trade publishing segment has been operating in a low-growth environment for several years, and that trend appears to have continued into 2016. Financial reports for the first half of 2016 from five major publishers showed that none of the companies had a sales increase in the first half of the year; HarperCollins had the best top-line performance, with only a minor sales decline compared to the first six months of 2015. Earnings fell at three publishers in the period and rose at two. Though sales of print books have stabilized, all five reporting publishers said sales of e-books fell in the first six months of 2016 compared to the January–June 2015 period.
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