AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Marjorie Celona – if you haven’t heard the name before, remember you heard it here first, because she is going places. The Victoria, British Columbia-born author is on a launch tour for her debut novel right now. Simply titled Y, the novel has already generated all kinds of literary buzz, earned legions of devoted fans, [...]

After mobile telecommunications brand Orange announced over the summer that it would no longer be sponsoring the fiction prize they have supported for 17 years, the future of the prize looked questionable. With sponsorship budgets already dedicated elsewhere, organizers were unable to secure a stable funding option in time for the 2013 prize, so happily, [...]

Sadie Jones has a new book out, her third, and she is living under a self-imposed Internet ban so she probably won’t be visiting our esteemed online organ. Her debut novel was The Outcast, her second was Small Wars and the third is called The Uninvited Guests. The Observer carried an interview with Jones yesterday. [...]

Eowyn Ivey is interviewed at the BBC about how she wrote her first novel, The Snow Child – which is going to sell many copies in 2012 and perhaps win awards too. The US-born author is named after a Tolkien character. She works in a bookshop, used to be a newspaper reporter, and she shoots [...]

YouTube might be stuffed full with videos of crazy cats and toddlers falling over, but it’s also an amazing archive like this opportunity to listen to David Foster Wallace express himself. This video was broadcast on March 27, 1997.

In 1976 photographer Jill Krementz decided to chronicle the day to day life of a 10-year-old student named Stephanie. The story follows her attendance at the School of American Ballet in New York through to being chosen for the starring role of Marie in George Balanchine‘s presentation of The Nutcracker. The book was called A [...]

Christie Watson, who is nominated for the UK’s Costa Prize for Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away, is interviewed at the Daily Telegraph about her day-job (and night-job too) in nursing. Nursing has changed since then into something I almost don’t recognise. The capes have been replaced with pyjama-like scrubs. The fob watch is an iPhone loaded [...]

The ever-blunt illustrator R. Crumb talks about his art being rejected by The New Yorker.

The story of how Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer, and three other people fell ill after eating wild mushrooms is like an Ian McEwan novel. It’s another example that real life can be stranger and more hard-hitting than anything written by a novelist or a screenwriter. The Guardian has an interview with Evans. [...]

Jarvis Cocker, frontman of Pulp and the man who invaded the stage while Michael Jackson performed because Jackson was attempting to be some “kind of Christ-like figure with the power of healing”, is the latest celebrity to move into publishing. He is following Pete Townsend, Henry Rollins and Anthony Bourdain. The Guardian interviews him and [...]