Tag: literature

  • Are there any sights more cheering than crowds of readers tramping across a field carrying books, or sitting under canopies discussing the minutiae of a single line of poetry, or a page of fiction? Increasingly, we live in such a fast-paced world that leaves precious little room for these acts of literary activity (for ‘activity’, may…

  • It increasingly appears as though we live in an era where the biggest publishing companies and media organisations are only concerned with stabilising profits for shareholders – and are prioritising making money over supporting originality and new creative ideas. With the largest corporations influencing so much of the culture we consume, this has the potential…

  • Good writing advice is hard to find. We’ve previously compiled various collections of writing tips from some of literature’s greatest minds; but we’re always looking to go one step further. As writers and creatives, our learning is built on the mentoring and advice of our peers and our mentors. The imparted knowledge they can share with…

  • A forest can be a spooky place. It may seem lush and inviting to an urban dweller, but it’s not as welcoming as it seems. It’s easy to imagine that there might be things in the thickest part of the forest that are quite beyond our knowledge, watching and waiting. This novella begins uncannily enough,…

  • I saw Jane Hariott for the first time since our schooldays over the body of a dead Canadian. Normandy, June 1944.  I was fresh from England, still blinking away the things I’d seen on the voyage across the channel and on the drive down from the coast. As a nurse I was used to death,…

  • Turkish novelist Elif Shafak has joined Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell in committing a manuscript of her writing to the Future Library project – a 100 year artwork that will see her work unpublished until 2114. Shafak’s text, The last taboo, was handed over in a ceremony in the Future Library Forest in Oslo, Norway. During the ceremony, the…

  • Acclaimed independent book publishers Salt Publishing are facing a fight for survival, as a challenging time for the publishing sector continues. In a tweet, Salt addressed its readers directly, asking for their support through the #JustOneBook initiative: Dear readers, we need your help. Sadly, we’re facing a very challenging time and need your custom to…

  • Celebrated as “the last of the great white male” American authors of the 20th Century, Philip Roth has died at the age of 85. Rather than devote pages (or pixels, as may more accurately be the case) to an obituary recounting the same great feats of an author who has towered over the US literary…

  • In 2114, 1,000 trees planted a century previously in the Nordmarka forest in Norway will be cut down. From their wood, the pages of 100 texts from 100 authors will be made and published. How can we make such predictions? Well, this is the end-goal of a generation-defying artistic project called the Future Library. Conceived…

  • Warwick University’s Writing Programme (WWP) has been consistently ranked as the best creative writing course in the UK for the past five years. In this article, Ellen Lavelle, one of the 2018 cohort of WWP’s MA students, takes us through the trials and tribulations of publishing a unique anthology of student writing.  I am not…