New Publisher Imprint Listing: Basalt Books
firstwriter.com – Tuesday March 14, 2023
Welcomes proposals for book projects anchored in the Pacific Northwest, particularly those focusing on the people, places, and cultures of the greater Northwest region. We encourage both established and first-time writers to contact us with your ideas. We are committed to publishing well-written and well-told stories.
Do we still need the Women’s Prize for Fiction?
spectator.co.uk – Friday March 10, 2023
Nine debut books were among the 16 novels to make the cut in this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction long list, announced this week. But what relevance does a gender-exclusive award retain when women dominate the contemporary world of publishing?
When the Women’s Prize for Fiction was launched in 1996 it was badly needed. Back then, female writers found it hard to get their work published. If they did succeed, their work was, all too often, unappreciated by critics and under-acknowledged. It’s clear that is no longer the case.
Women buy 80 per cent of all novels. At the time of writing, the New York Times top 15 bestseller list features 13 female writers. One global survey found 60 per cent of literary agents to be female; another poll, in the American publishing industry, found that 78 per cent of publishing staff overall were female, including six in ten at executive or board level. According to figures from the Bookseller, 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women. By 2021, female-authored books sold more copies on average than those written by men.
Women's Prize for Fiction nominee Maggie O'Farrell shares her writing tips
harpersbazaar.com – Friday March 10, 2023
Irish novelist Maggie O'Farrell won the Betty Trask Award for her first novel, 'After You'd Gone'. Her novel 'Hamnet', about the life of William Shakespeare's son, received international acclaim and also won numerous awards, including the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. This year, she is longlisted for the same award for her novel, 'The Marriage Portrait'. Here, she shares her advice on writing...
Beginning isn't easy
What I wish someone had told me when I was starting out is this: you don’t have to begin at the beginning. Openings are hard. The blizzard-white emptiness of the page, the empty document with the patiently waiting cursor, the idea that you are about to inscribe the first of many thousands of words, the knowledge that you are embarking on a project that will take two or three years. All this can conspire to give you such awful vertigo that it’s hard to put down anything, let alone a defining initial sentence.
I have found, again and again, that it’s rarely always immediately apparent where in its timeline your narrative should start. It took me a while to work out that a writer doesn’t have to begin at the beginning. You can start wherever you like in the story.
Grammarly expands beyond proofreading with AI-powered writing
engadget.com – Friday March 10, 2023
Grammarly announced today that it’s (unsurprisingly) diving into the generative AI fray. GrammarlyGo is an upcoming set of auto-composition features to help the AI proofreading software keep up with the many companies adding the ChatGPT API (or different generative AI backends) to their products.
GrammarlyGo can use context like voice, style, purpose and where you’re writing to determine its approach. So, for example, it can spit out email replies, shorten passages, rewrite them for tone and clarity, brainstorm or choose from one-click prompts — all while adhering to your company’s voice or other provided context. In addition, since Grammarly’s desktop service can pop up in any text field on your computer, its generative writing could be slightly more convenient than competitors (like Notion or Gmail’s Smart Compose) that require you to visit an app or website. The company says GrammarlyGo will be enabled by default for individuals, and you can toggle it in settings.
10 Tips For Applying to Writing Residencies
electricliterature.com – Thursday March 9, 2023
Like a lot of writers tackling a book project, I’ve applied to a few residencies with mixed success. But it was only this year, when I reviewed applications for a residency that I had previously attended that I really started to see what makes some applications fail and others really succeed.
Most of the factors that decide a person’s acceptance are settled before they write their application— namely, the quality of the work, its alignment with the mission of the residency, and their personal qualifications as a writer. But a weak application can get a very established writer passed over with little more than a second thought, while a strong one can send an emerging writer to the top of the short list. So what can you do to put your application in contention?
Writing is a ‘questionable business’, but what to make of John Hughes, one of the most prolific plagiarists in literary history?
theconversation.com – Thursday March 2, 2023
In June of last year, the Guardian revealed that John Hughes’ Miles Franklin-longlisted novel The Dogs contained material lifted from The Unwomanly Face of War, a book by Nobel Prize-winning Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich. When approached about this, Hughes apologised for the transgression, describing the plagiarism as unintentional.
Before long, it was found that The Dogs contained material taken from numerous other texts, including widely read classics The Great Gatsby and All Quiet on the Western Front.
Hughes responded to these further revelations not with an apology, but with a spirited self-defence. He compared himself, rather incongruously, to Jorge Luis Borges’ Pierre Menard – a fictional character who sets out to rewrite Don Quixote line for line (the absurdity of the endeavour being the point) – and Jean Rhys, whose novel Wide Sargasso Sea does not hide the fact that it is a prequel to and reframing of Jane Eyre that exposes the original’s colonialist underpinnings.
Hughes was, he claimed, creating “a kind of literary palimpsest”. He insisted he had “always spoken through the voices of others”.
Leicestershire MP accuses James Bond publishers of censorship over classic novel rewrites
leicestermercury.co.uk – Tuesday February 28, 2023
Andrew Bridgen has hit out at rewrites to the classic James Bond novels, claiming it is “censorship”. The MP for North West Leicestershire has added his name to the vocal critics to the move, but publishers have defended their decision.
Mr Bridgen, who is still suspended by the Conservative Party for spreading misinformation on Covid-19 vaccines, spoke out after it emerged that Ian Fleming Publications were making alterations to classic Bond novels ahead of the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale’s publication this spring.
Blake Friedmann literary agency launches second online open week for writers
thebookseller.com – Tuesday February 28, 2023
The Blake Friedmann Literary Agency will run a week dedicated to demystifying publishing and agenting, and supporting writers seeking representation. From Monday, 6th March, the agency will share agent blogs on a variety of agenting and publishing topics. It will also run book giveaways across its social media accounts until 10th March.
The aim is to offer insights into what an agent does, how to navigate the submission process to find an agent, and how an author and agent work together. There will also be a focus on understanding the publication process, earning income as an author through rights sales, as well as getting into the agenting or publishing industries.
New Literary Agent Listing: Edwina de Charnace
firstwriter.com – Tuesday February 28, 2023
She loves stories centring on relationships and group dynamics and will read anything promising answers to the question of belonging (a start will do). Has a soft spot for writing from or about East Asia.
Roald Dahl once said he would set an ‘enormous crocodile’ on publishers if they changed his work
uk.style.yahoo.com – Monday February 27, 2023
Roald Dahl's comments from 40 years ago about "setting an enormous crocodile" on his publishers if they changed his work have shed light on what the late author would have thought of attempts to censor him.
Dahl was recorded specifically saying that he would be outraged by the idea of censorship after his death, and joked that he would send the title character from his book The Enormous Crocodile to deal with his publishers.
The Daily Telegraph had reported that recent versions of children's favourites by Dahl, who died in 1990, had been changed by publisher Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Random House, to remove descriptions of characters as "fat" and "ugly" in books including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda.
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