Access To Authors

This week I have been doing some QAs on my blog with authors who will be at Book Expo America the week after next. I also did a workshop with a group of exiled writers at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture to follow up on World Book Night.

Of the 48 copies of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that I was assigned as one of 25,000 ‘givers’ on WBN, I gave some out at random on the streets of Brixton, sent seven to prisoners of conscience via English PEN‘s Writers in Prison programme and gave the rest to the writers at the Medical Foundation. Some good pieces came out of last week’s workshop. Normally I pride myself on leading very upbeat, jolly sessions but the pieces last week were quite sombre and very moving, and most of us shed tears as they were read. Some of the pieces will be published in an anthology and others will appear online so I’ll link to them when they’re published.

Books

I started reading the first of Christopher Fowler‘s Bryant and May books, Full Dark House. It’s very good so far – clever, well-written and well-researched – and I expect to read the rest of the series. It starts in the present day but goes back to London of the 1940s during the Blitz to set up the partnership between the eponymous crime-solving duo. CF has a very interesting blog here and there’s a Bryant and May ‘Peculiar Crimes’ site here with more information about the series.

I read the first three teaser chapters of Connie Brockway‘s historical romance, The Other Guy’s Bride after reading her biography on her website in preparation for a QA I did with her on this blog. It’s a great set-up for the story with a feisty British heroine heading to Egypt to find a precious artefact, and there’s lots of humour in it. I’m hoping to grab an advance copy at BEA in New York next week but if not I’ll look out for it when it’s published in November so I can read the rest of it.

I also did a QA with Charlie Williams on my blog last week. His Royston Blake novels (about a doorman in the English town of Mangel) are being re-released, one a month, between now and August when a new book, One Dead Hen, will published. I’ll be meeting Charlie at BEA so I have downloaded Deadfolk and I’ll be reading it next week.

I’ll be posting another BEA-related QA on Monday, this time with Karen McQuestion. She’s the author of six novels, including A Scattered Life, which has been optioned for film. I plan to read the book before I meet Karen, too, so I have a copy of that on my Kindle to read next week.

Lovely Literary Events

Lambeth Readers and Writers festival starts next week with events involving authors including Courttia Newland, Lemn Sissay, Edward Docx and Chrissie Manby. I’ll be appearing on a panel of women writers at Brixton Library on Friday 20th with Chrissie, Lotte Daley and Gillian Hudson.

I’ll be heading to New York for Book Expo America next weekend and reading at Guerilla Lit in the East Village on Wednesday 25th with Terese Svoboda and Reinhardt Suarez.

The programme for the Stoke Newington Literary Festival has been published. Authors who will be appearing include Stella Duffy, Linda Grant, John Hegley, Emma Kennedy, Howard Marks, Karen McLeod, Courttia Newland, Dan Rhodes, Jon Ronson, David Walliams, Alex Wheatle and Evie Wyld. I’ll be appearing as part of the New Libertines line-up at Baby Bathhouse at 4pm on Saturday 4th June. Further info about the New Libertines tour here.

Article source: http://www.zimbio.com/Writers+Blogs+on+Writing/articles/n0-y6v0QRia/Sunday+Salon+books+literary+events

Tags: writing and bloggin

This entry was posted by Editor on Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 6:04 pm and is filed under writing jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.