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3 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
2 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
2 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
2 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
2 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
3 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
2 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
2 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
2 episodes with commonwealth writers prize
My guest on this episode is C.S. Richardson. C.S. Richardson is an award-winning book designer who worked in book publishing for more than forty years, and an author whose first novel, The End of the Alphabet, was an international bestseller, published in fourteen countries and ten languages, and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Canada and the Caribbean). His second novel, The Emperor of Paris, was a national bestseller, named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the year, and was longlisted for the Giller Prize. His most recent book is the novel All the Colour in the World, published in 2023 by Knopf Canada. That book was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. The Toronto Star called it “a heady celebration of art, an act and form the author respects in all its facets.”C.S.—it's Charles Scott, by the way—and I talk about the reason for the decade-long gap between his second and third novels, about the advantages and disadvantages that come with writing a novel while working deep in the heart of publishing, and how retiring to become a full-time writer has allowed him to push his creative ambitions even further.My 2012 profile of C.S. Richardson in Toronto Life.This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds, and studied English Literature at Oxford University. He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Open Book Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts. On this episode of Little Atoms he talks to Neil Denny about his latest novel Another Man In The Street. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the sixth episode of “Notes on a Native Son,” writer Caryl Phillips shares the experience of getting to know James Baldwin beyond the pages of his work. Phillips not only respected Baldwin as a writer, but regarded him as a friend and perhaps a mentor, too. Phillips was born on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, and moved to Leeds, in northern England, when he was just 4 months old. It was as a student at Oxford where he first encountered the work of Baldwin. He tells host Razia Iqbal that meeting Baldwin was the first time he'd ever met a writer, something he knew he wanted to be.Caryl Phillips was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for “Crossing the River,” which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. “A Distant Shore" was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He currently teaches English at Yale University. Tell us what you think. We're @noteswithkai on Instagram and X (Twitter). Email us at notes@wnyc.org. Send us a voice message by recording yourself on your phone and emailing us, or record one here.Notes from America airs live on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts.
EPISODE 1676: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Anna Funder, author of WIFEDOM, about George Orwell's "invisible wife" Eileen O'Shaughnessy, Orwell's homosexuality, and patriarchy as doublethink ANNA FUNDER is the author of Stasiland and All That I Am, and the novella The Girl with the Dogs. Stasiland, hailed as a ‘classic', tells true stories of ordinary people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of others who worked for the Stasi. In 2004 Stasiland won the UK's premier award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and was a finalist for many other awards. Anna's novel All That I Am is an homage to four German anti-Hitler activists living bravely but precariously in exile in London in the 1930s. All That I Am won many literary awards including Australia's most prestigious, the Miles Franklin Prize, and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It spent over a year on the bestseller lists, was BBC Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime, and The Times Book of the Month. Both books are international bestsellers, published in over twenty-four countries. Originally trained as an international human rights lawyer, Anna is a former DAAD Fellow in Berlin, Australia Council Fellow, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellow. She has lived in Paris, Berlin, and Brooklyn, and now lives in Sydney, Australia. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Adventist Voices by Spectrum: The Journal of the Adventist Forum
In the novel, Stillwater, by noted Canadian writer, Darcie Friesen Hossack, sixteen-year-old Lizzy is trapped, caught between her passion for science and the teachings of her Seventh-day Adventist father and Mennonite mother. In this conversation with her, profound Adventist author Trudy Morgan-Cole, joins me as we explore food, religion, Canadian regional lit, and what it's like to create Adventist characters. Darcie Friesen Hossack is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers with roots in the Mennonite and Seventh-day Adventist communities. A career food writer and editor of the online WordCity Literary Journal, her short story collection, Mennonites Don't Dance (Thistledown Press), was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Award, and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading Evergreen Award for Adult Fiction. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We spoke with author and book designer CS Richardson, whose first novel The End of the Alphabet won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best 1st Book. His new book, All the Colour in the World is a kaleidoscopic novel about a boy's love affair with art and a man's struggle with loss. And while we had him on the line, we took the opportunity to talk a bit about his other career as one of Canada's most celebrate d book designers. CS Richardson on writing with all the colour in the world
We spoke with author and book designer CS Richardson, whose first novel The End of the Alphabet won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best 1st Book. His new book, All the Colour in the World is a kaleidoscopic novel about a boy's love affair with art and a man's struggle with loss. And while we had him on the line, we took the opportunity to talk a bit about his other career as one of Canada's most celebrate d book designers. CS Richardson on writing with all the colour in the world
“Wussy” European vampires. African folklore and mythology, and how they help establish that “homophobia is not African.” How reading Jackie Collins and Leon Uris during childhood fosters a lifelong passion for books. The structuring of an immersive, propulsive fantasy trilogy. This week on Book Dreams, Eve and Julie discuss all of this and so much more with Marlon James, the powerhouse author of A Brief History of Seven Killings, which won the 2015 Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Marlon talks about his new novel, Moon Witch, Spider King, the follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2019. Marlon shares with Julie and Eve how certain experiences in his own life have shown up in his work, and he previews “Get Millie Black,” the crime drama he is writing and producing for HBO, which his mother “will say is inspired by her, because she is a detective. It's not. Please stop that, mother.” Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. In addition to A Brief History of Seven Killings and the first two books of the “Dark Star” trilogy–Black Leopard, Red Wolf and Moon Witch, Spider King–he is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel John Crow's Devil was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers Prize and was a New York Times Editors' Choice. Marlon is the co-host of the podcast “Marlon and Jake Read Dead People,” where he and his editor, Jake Morrissey, discuss the classics. Find us on Twitter (@bookdreamspod) and Instagram (@bookdreamspodcast), or email us at contact@bookdreamspodcast.com. We encourage you to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter for information about our episodes, guests, and more. Book Dreams is a part of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to Book Dreams, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows about literature, writing, and storytelling like Storybound and The History of Literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Two children stumble upon a mass grave in the forest outside of Minsk in Belarus where the NKVD, Stalin's secret police, buried tens of thousands of innocent victims of torture. The Singing Forest, by Judith McCormack (Biblioasis 2021) weaves the story of a low-rung enforcer of that torture in pre-WWII Belarus and a modern-day Canadian lawyer on the team prosecuting long-forgotten crimes. Stefan Drozd's life from earliest childhood lacked anything resembling kindness, nurturing, or morality. He has no understanding of human interaction, never had a friend, and did whatever he had to do to survive, even when that required torturing, murder, or lying to get into Canada after the war. Years later, Drozd is in his nineties and doesn't understand why anyone is making a fuss about something that happened so long ago. Leah Jarvis, a somewhat timid and confused young lawyer from an eccentric family, is helping prosecute him for war crimes. Leah knows that Drozd is guilty, but she needs hard evidence. While working on this case, she grapples with her own history – the death of her mother, the disappearance of her father, and her erratic upbringing by three uncles. Leah questions her Jewish heritage and wonders how a person becomes evil, how power is wielded by those who have it, and how justice is served. This is a beautifully written, lyrical novel about truth, heritage, and memory. Judith McCormack was born outside Chicago and grew up in Toronto, with brief stints in Montreal and Vancouver. Her first short story was nominated for the Journey Prize, and the next three were selected for the Coming Attractions Anthology. Her collection of stories, The Rule of Last Clear Chance, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award and was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail. Her work has been published in the Harvard Review, Descant and The Fiddlehead, and one of her stories has been turned into a short film by her twin sister, Naomi McCormack, an award-winning filmmaker. Her most recent short story in the Harvard Review was recorded as a spoken word version by The Drum and has been anthologized in 14: Best Canadian Short Stories. Backspring, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award in 2016. McCormack has several law degrees, which have mostly served to convince her that law is a branch of fiction, and she tries to point out as often as possible that Honoré de Balzac, Henry James, Paul Cézanne, Cole Porter and Geraldo Rivera were lawyers. She is a recipient of the Guthrie Award for outstanding public service and contributions to access to justice, and the Law Society Medal for outstanding service in the highest ideals of the profession. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
Two children stumble upon a mass grave in the forest outside of Minsk in Belarus where the NKVD, Stalin's secret police, buried tens of thousands of innocent victims of torture. The Singing Forest, by Judith McCormack (Biblioasis 2021) weaves the story of a low-rung enforcer of that torture in pre-WWII Belarus and a modern-day Canadian lawyer on the team prosecuting long-forgotten crimes. Stefan Drozd's life from earliest childhood lacked anything resembling kindness, nurturing, or morality. He has no understanding of human interaction, never had a friend, and did whatever he had to do to survive, even when that required torturing, murder, or lying to get into Canada after the war. Years later, Drozd is in his nineties and doesn't understand why anyone is making a fuss about something that happened so long ago. Leah Jarvis, a somewhat timid and confused young lawyer from an eccentric family, is helping prosecute him for war crimes. Leah knows that Drozd is guilty, but she needs hard evidence. While working on this case, she grapples with her own history – the death of her mother, the disappearance of her father, and her erratic upbringing by three uncles. Leah questions her Jewish heritage and wonders how a person becomes evil, how power is wielded by those who have it, and how justice is served. This is a beautifully written, lyrical novel about truth, heritage, and memory. Judith McCormack was born outside Chicago and grew up in Toronto, with brief stints in Montreal and Vancouver. Her first short story was nominated for the Journey Prize, and the next three were selected for the Coming Attractions Anthology. Her collection of stories, The Rule of Last Clear Chance, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award and was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail. Her work has been published in the Harvard Review, Descant and The Fiddlehead, and one of her stories has been turned into a short film by her twin sister, Naomi McCormack, an award-winning filmmaker. Her most recent short story in the Harvard Review was recorded as a spoken word version by The Drum and has been anthologized in 14: Best Canadian Short Stories. Backspring, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award in 2016. McCormack has several law degrees, which have mostly served to convince her that law is a branch of fiction, and she tries to point out as often as possible that Honoré de Balzac, Henry James, Paul Cézanne, Cole Porter and Geraldo Rivera were lawyers. She is a recipient of the Guthrie Award for outstanding public service and contributions to access to justice, and the Law Society Medal for outstanding service in the highest ideals of the profession. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Two children stumble upon a mass grave in the forest outside of Minsk in Belarus where the NKVD, Stalin's secret police, buried tens of thousands of innocent victims of torture. The Singing Forest, by Judith McCormack (Biblioasis 2021) weaves the story of a low-rung enforcer of that torture in pre-WWII Belarus and a modern-day Canadian lawyer on the team prosecuting long-forgotten crimes. Stefan Drozd's life from earliest childhood lacked anything resembling kindness, nurturing, or morality. He has no understanding of human interaction, never had a friend, and did whatever he had to do to survive, even when that required torturing, murder, or lying to get into Canada after the war. Years later, Drozd is in his nineties and doesn't understand why anyone is making a fuss about something that happened so long ago. Leah Jarvis, a somewhat timid and confused young lawyer from an eccentric family, is helping prosecute him for war crimes. Leah knows that Drozd is guilty, but she needs hard evidence. While working on this case, she grapples with her own history – the death of her mother, the disappearance of her father, and her erratic upbringing by three uncles. Leah questions her Jewish heritage and wonders how a person becomes evil, how power is wielded by those who have it, and how justice is served. This is a beautifully written, lyrical novel about truth, heritage, and memory. Judith McCormack was born outside Chicago and grew up in Toronto, with brief stints in Montreal and Vancouver. Her first short story was nominated for the Journey Prize, and the next three were selected for the Coming Attractions Anthology. Her collection of stories, The Rule of Last Clear Chance, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Award and was named one of the best books of the year by The Globe and Mail. Her work has been published in the Harvard Review, Descant and The Fiddlehead, and one of her stories has been turned into a short film by her twin sister, Naomi McCormack, an award-winning filmmaker. Her most recent short story in the Harvard Review was recorded as a spoken word version by The Drum and has been anthologized in 14: Best Canadian Short Stories. Backspring, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award in 2016. McCormack has several law degrees, which have mostly served to convince her that law is a branch of fiction, and she tries to point out as often as possible that Honoré de Balzac, Henry James, Paul Cézanne, Cole Porter and Geraldo Rivera were lawyers. She is a recipient of the Guthrie Award for outstanding public service and contributions to access to justice, and the Law Society Medal for outstanding service in the highest ideals of the profession. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
Tahmima Anam is the recipient of a Commonwealth Writers Prize, an O. Henry Prize, and has been named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Born in Bangladesh, she now lives in London where she is on the board of ROLI, a music tech company founded by her husband. Her latest novel is called The Startup Wife. Today's sponsor is HelloFresh! Go to HelloFresh.com/marisreview14 and use code marisreview14 for up to 14 free meals plus free shipping! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a novelist, playwright and filmmaker who joins us on the pod today to discuss her groundbreaking work and its influence on readers. Tsitsi is the author of Nervous Conditions, which in 1988 was the first book to be published in English by a black woman from Zimbabwe and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and its sequels The Book of Not (2006) and This Mournable Body (2018). She was shortlisted in 2020 for the Booker Prize. Tsitsi lives in Harare and is the director of the Institute of Creatve Arts for Progress in Africa Trust. Asking the questions is Molly-Rose Medhurst, student writer and activist who worked with us as an intern earlier in 2021. Take a look at an article she wrote: https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/article/must-reads-for-lgbt-history-month/ Hosted by Simon Jones and Steph McKenna. Join our Discord community! https://discord.gg/3G39dRW Music by Bennet Maples.
Dismissal, in fact, is the default response to khayal (the preeminent genre of North Indian classical music), well before we get to know what khayal is, and vaguely term its strangeness 'classical music'. Those who later become acquainted with its extraordinary melodiousness forget that on the initial encounter it had sounded unmelodious. These words are part of the introduction to Amit Chaudhuri's newest book Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (New York Review Books / Faber and Faber, 2021). The book is part guide to Indian music, part memoir of Chaudhuri's life, part examination of modern culture. In this interview, I ask Amit to explain what makes Indian music so special, both in general and to his life. We explore how Indian music influenced the writing of this most recent book, and how his musical experiences in India and abroad have affected how he sees the world. Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, several collections of short stories, poetry and essays, one nonfiction work, and a critical study of D.H. Lawrence's poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia in England and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition to his writing, he is also a singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a project that brings together the raga, blues, and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Finding the Raga. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review
Dismissal, in fact, is the default response to khayal (the preeminent genre of North Indian classical music), well before we get to know what khayal is, and vaguely term its strangeness 'classical music'. Those who later become acquainted with its extraordinary melodiousness forget that on the initial encounter it had sounded unmelodious. These words are part of the introduction to Amit Chaudhuri’s newest book Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (New York Review Books / Faber and Faber, 2021). The book is part guide to Indian music, part memoir of Chaudhuri’s life, part examination of modern culture. In this interview, I ask Amit to explain what makes Indian music so special, both in general and to his life. We explore how Indian music influenced the writing of this most recent book, and how his musical experiences in India and abroad have affected how he sees the world. Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, several collections of short stories, poetry and essays, one nonfiction work, and a critical study of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia in England and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition to his writing, he is also a singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a project that brings together the raga, blues, and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Finding the Raga. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts
Dismissal, in fact, is the default response to khayal (the preeminent genre of North Indian classical music), well before we get to know what khayal is, and vaguely term its strangeness 'classical music'. Those who later become acquainted with its extraordinary melodiousness forget that on the initial encounter it had sounded unmelodious. These words are part of the introduction to Amit Chaudhuri’s newest book Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (New York Review Books / Faber and Faber, 2021). The book is part guide to Indian music, part memoir of Chaudhuri’s life, part examination of modern culture. In this interview, I ask Amit to explain what makes Indian music so special, both in general and to his life. We explore how Indian music influenced the writing of this most recent book, and how his musical experiences in India and abroad have affected how he sees the world. Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, several collections of short stories, poetry and essays, one nonfiction work, and a critical study of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia in England and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition to his writing, he is also a singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a project that brings together the raga, blues, and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Finding the Raga. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Dismissal, in fact, is the default response to khayal (the preeminent genre of North Indian classical music), well before we get to know what khayal is, and vaguely term its strangeness 'classical music'. Those who later become acquainted with its extraordinary melodiousness forget that on the initial encounter it had sounded unmelodious. These words are part of the introduction to Amit Chaudhuri’s newest book Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (New York Review Books / Faber and Faber, 2021). The book is part guide to Indian music, part memoir of Chaudhuri’s life, part examination of modern culture. In this interview, I ask Amit to explain what makes Indian music so special, both in general and to his life. We explore how Indian music influenced the writing of this most recent book, and how his musical experiences in India and abroad have affected how he sees the world. Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, several collections of short stories, poetry and essays, one nonfiction work, and a critical study of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia in England and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition to his writing, he is also a singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a project that brings together the raga, blues, and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Finding the Raga. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
Dismissal, in fact, is the default response to khayal (the preeminent genre of North Indian classical music), well before we get to know what khayal is, and vaguely term its strangeness 'classical music'. Those who later become acquainted with its extraordinary melodiousness forget that on the initial encounter it had sounded unmelodious. These words are part of the introduction to Amit Chaudhuri’s newest book Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (New York Review Books / Faber and Faber, 2021). The book is part guide to Indian music, part memoir of Chaudhuri’s life, part examination of modern culture. In this interview, I ask Amit to explain what makes Indian music so special, both in general and to his life. We explore how Indian music influenced the writing of this most recent book, and how his musical experiences in India and abroad have affected how he sees the world. Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, several collections of short stories, poetry and essays, one nonfiction work, and a critical study of D.H. Lawrence’s poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds the titles of Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia in England and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University in India. In addition to his writing, he is also a singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a project that brings together the raga, blues, and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Finding the Raga. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music
Gil Adamson is the guest. Her new novel, The Ridgerunner, will be published in the United States by House of Anansi Press on February 2, 2021. Adamson is the critically acclaimed author of The Outlander, which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the ReLit Award, and the Drummer General’s Award. It was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, CBC Canada Reads, and the Prix Femina in France; longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as a Globe and Mail and Washington Post Top 100 Book. She is also the author of a collection of linked stories, Help Me, Jacques Cousteau, and two poetry collections, Primitive and Ashland. She lives in Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A young man visits his half-brother in Vancouver and steals a book that changes his life. An archeology student is befriended and brought to Iraq by a brother and sister who need his help in assessing a family art collection. A man who fought for the British in South Africa’s Boer War enlists as an American to fight in WWI Germany. Spanning decades and continents, the stories in Bechard’s haunting novel A Song from Faraway (Milkweed Editions, 2020) slowly reveal themselves to be connected. In these pages, the lies of one generation are inherited by the next, homes are burnt to the ground, wives are abandoned, and innocent people suffer. With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain – this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests. Deni Ellis Bechard is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book); Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for Literary Fiction and chosen by CBC/Radio Canada as one of 2017’s Incontournables and one of the most important books of that year to be read by Canada's political leadership); Of Bonobos and Men (Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism and Nautilus Grand Prize winner); Cures for Hunger (an IndieNext pick and one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Kuei, my Friend: a Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation, (coauthored with First Nations poet Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine). A traveler by nature, Béchard has a habit of changing homes as often as every three months, and the place he has lived in the longest over the past ten years was a community circus. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A young man visits his half-brother in Vancouver and steals a book that changes his life. An archeology student is befriended and brought to Iraq by a brother and sister who need his help in assessing a family art collection. A man who fought for the British in South Africa’s Boer War enlists as an American to fight in WWI Germany. Spanning decades and continents, the stories in Bechard’s haunting novel A Song from Faraway (Milkweed Editions, 2020) slowly reveal themselves to be connected. In these pages, the lies of one generation are inherited by the next, homes are burnt to the ground, wives are abandoned, and innocent people suffer. With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain – this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests. Deni Ellis Bechard is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book); Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for Literary Fiction and chosen by CBC/Radio Canada as one of 2017’s Incontournables and one of the most important books of that year to be read by Canada's political leadership); Of Bonobos and Men (Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism and Nautilus Grand Prize winner); Cures for Hunger (an IndieNext pick and one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Kuei, my Friend: a Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation, (coauthored with First Nations poet Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine). A traveler by nature, Béchard has a habit of changing homes as often as every three months, and the place he has lived in the longest over the past ten years was a community circus. G.P. Gottlieb is the author of the Whipped and Sipped Mystery Series and a prolific baker of healthful breads and pastries. Please contact her through her website (GPGottlieb.com) if you wish to recommend an author (of a beautifully-written new novel) to interview, to listen to her previous podcast interviews, to read her mystery book reviews, or to check out some of her awesome recipes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
About Vikram Chandra:My next guest on The One Percent Project is the world-renowned author, professor and tech entrepreneur Vikram Chandra. His first book Red Earth and Pouring Rain, published in 1995 was received with outstanding critical acclaim. It won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. In 2006, he published Sacred Games, which won the Hutch Crossword Award for English Fiction and a Salon Book Award. In 2016, Sacred Games was chosen by Netflix to be their first original series from India. Vikram has been teaching creative writing for 25+ years first at George Washington University and now at UC Berkley. He is the co-founder and CEO of Granthika Co., a revolutionary software startup that is re-inventing writing and reading for the digital age. I enjoyed speaking to Vikram about his early life, his work and his entrepreneurial journey.Rapid Fire:Most favorite comic book.I have to say ‘Phantom'- ‘Vetal'Advice that you would like to give Arthur Doyle, Sherlock Holmes?Get more women in there.A book, blog, or an author other than you who you will highly recommend for creative writing?Book, that's a tough one. I actually have a list of like 12 books. I guess, you know, I would say... okay, probably I guess I would say the book that I recommend to everyone is Janet Burroway's ‘Writing Fiction'. It's a wonderful craft book. Absolutely, it covers the field in a really clarify... I mean, a really clear way without dumbing it down.The hardest thing about your job?Well, actually writing every day. So, I have a friend. He's a colleague in the Department of English at Berkeley, Robert Hass, Bob Hass. He's a great American poet. And he has this... this lines that he says, “Writing is hell, but not writing is also hell. The only tolerable state is just having written.”Is there a third season of ‘Sacred Games'?The writer is the last one to know. So, unless there'll be an answer, I won't know. And if I knew, I couldn't tell you because they will send their ninjas after me.
Ayesha Harruna Attah is the author of four novels: Harmattan Rain (Per Ankh Publishers), nominated for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; Saturday's Shadows (World Editions), shortlisted for the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013; The Hundred Wells of Salaga (Cassava Republic Press, UK; Other Press, US); and a forthcoming young adult novel, The Deep Blue Between (Pushkin Children's). Educated at Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and NYU, Ayesha has degrees in Biochemistry, Journalism, and Creative Writing. A 2015 Africa Centre Artists in Residency Award Laureate and Sacatar Fellow, she is the recipient of the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for non-fiction.
Sulaiman Addonia is a novelist who fled Eritrea as a refugee in childhood. He spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan following the Om Hajar massacre in 1976, and in his early teens he lived and studied in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He arrived in London as an underage unaccompanied refugee without a word of English and went on to earn an MA in Development Studies from SOAS and a BSc in Economics from UCL.The Consequences of Lovewas shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was translated into more than 20 languages. Sulaiman Addonia currently lives in Brussels where he has launched a creative writing academy for refugees and asylum seekers. Silence is My Mother Tongue is his second novel.
The Auckland Writers Festival Winter Series will be streaming live and free-to-view on the Festival’s YouTube and Facebook channels, and then available as a video or podcast via our soundcloud, iTunes or our website. Episode Eight features: PHILIPPA SWAN Philippa Swan’s time-travelling novel The Night of All Souls blends a contemporary tale with the secrets of the 1921 Pulitzer-prizewinner Edith Wharton.So Swan trained as a landscape architect and wrote the critically acclaimed non-fiction book, Life (and Death) In A Small City Garden. She is a freelance writer for NZ Gardener and Cuisine, and has won awards for her short-stories. FREYA DALY SADGROVE Writer, performer and theatre maker Freya Daly Sadgrove recently published her first poetry collection, Head Girl. Her work is described as profoundly funny, surprising and moving, and ruthless in its interrogation of human behaviour. She has a Master's in Poetry from Victoria University of Wellington, and her work has appeared in various publications in Aotearoa, Australia and the US. HELON HABILA Nigerian US-based journalist, poet, and author Helon Habila is considered one of Africa’s finest literary voices. He writes about identity, exile and the many kinds of travellers now crisscrossing Africa and Europe. Habila’s fourth, novel Travellers has it all, reviews The Guardian, “intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion, and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute concerns of our age – the refugee crisis”. Habila has won numerous awards including the Caine Prize, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. HOST: PAULA MORRIS (Aotearoa New Zealand) Paula Morris (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. The 2019 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, she teaches creative writing at The University of Auckland, sits on the Māori Literature Trust and is the founder of the Academy of NZ Literature. This series provides an opportunity to champion New Zealand and international books that were to feature at our cancelled May Festival, we encourage you to support writers and NZ publishers and booksellers by purchasing featured books. Order via our Festival bookseller. #awfwinterseries
Small Island by bestselling author Andrea Levy won the Orange Prize for Fiction, as well as many other awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Whitbread. Now a major BBC drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Naomie Harris, its enduring appeal will captivate fans of Maya Angelou and Zadie Smith. 'A great read... honest, skilful, thoughtful and important' - Guardian It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London, the conflict has only just begun. Queenie Bligh's neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but Queenie doesn't know when her husband will return, or if he will come back at all. What else can she do? Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England as a civilian he finds himself treated very differently. It's desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door. Gilbert's wife Hortense, too, had longed to leave Jamaica and start a better life in England. But when she joins him she is shocked to find London shabby, decrepit, and far from the golden city of her dreams. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was...
Chatting With Sherri welcomes author Sulari Gentill! A reformed lawyer, Sulari Gentill is the award-winning author of the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, the Hero Trilogy, and a number of standalone novels. She lives on a small farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains, where she grows French Black Truffles and writes about murder and mayhem. Sulari has won and been shortlisted in many awards including: the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Australian Book Industry Award, the Davitt Award, the Ned Kelly Award, and the Scarlett Stiletto Award. She was the inaugural Eminent Writer in Residence at the Australian Museum of Democracy. Most recently she won the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel and was awarded a 2019 Create Grant by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.
Novelist and UTS’s Creative Intelligence & Innovation course director Bem Le Hunte joins The Works’ Douglas Nicol and Norton Rose Fulbright’s Nick Abrahams to discuss what the concept of creative intelligence actually means on a day-to-day basis. As well as heading up the degree program, Bem’s first novel, The Seduction of Silence, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2001. Her second novel – There, Where The Pepper Grows - was published in 2005. Bem takes Douglas and Nick through how creativity and innovation can make a better world and use creativity to solve problems across a range of disciplines and how we can use our own creativity to find and solve business problems. Smart Dust is produced and edited by Daresay, the content specialists: https://daresay.com.au/ Hosted by Douglas Nicol, Strategy Partner, The Works (https://theworksagency.com.au/) and Nick Abrahams, Global Head of Strategy and Innovation, Norton Rose Fulbright (https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en-au/people/120114). Bem Le Hunte’s website: http://www.bemlehunte.com/ UTS Creative Intelligence & Innovation degree: https://www.uts.edu.au/future-students/transdisciplinary-innovation/undergraduate-courses/creative-intelligence-and Subscribe via: Spotify Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Stitcher
Ayesha Harruna Attah is the writer of three novels. Her debut novel, Harmattan Rain, was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Africa Region. Her most recent novel, The Hundred Wells of Salaga, is a wonderful historical novel set in pre-colonial Ghana following two women whose fates intersect. This novel has been translated into several languages already. Her writing is also included in the grand New Daughters of Africa anthology.In this episode recoreded during the African Book Festival Berlin, we talk about the making of The Hundred Wells of Salaga, the joys of research and the difficult task to decide what to keep out, what kind of history we are told, inserting queer characters in historical fiction, and food writing (shoutout to African Food Map).
Writer and editor Tom Cho in conversation with Jaipur Bytes host Lakshya Datta. In this podcast-exclusive chat, Tom talks to Lakshya about his first book, his next book, and where and how he finds the words to fill them. Tom’s debut collection of fiction, titled "Look Who’s Morphing", was shortlisted for multiple awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book. He also has over 70 fiction publications in journals. His current project is a novel on the meaning of life. Originally from Australia, Tom now lives in Canada, and was a speaker at JLF Toronto last month. You can follow Tom's work at www.tomcho.com.
Abidemi Sanusi is a former human rights worker and now writer. Her book, Eyo, was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Based in London, she's also an SEO consultant and coach. In this podcast episode she explains: Why every writer should learn to write for the web How to balance writing fiction and nonfiction What's working in SEO today for writers and authors How she balances creative and analytical work Why she still writes fictionAnd lots moreAttention writers! What's the best grammar checker of 2019? Find out in my guide and get a discount on your tool of choice.--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/becomeawritertoday/messageSupport the show (https://becomeawritertoday.com/join)
Abidemi SanusiAuthor. Nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for EyoFeatured in: BBC, Reuters, the Guardian, Independent on SundayNew book: Looking for Bono, coming out in 2019, published by Jacaranda (#Twenty2020 author)Founder: www.abidemi.tv, the website for ambitious writersFeatured in Scribendi: '28 Best Writing Websites of 2019'Course: 'From Book Idea to Finished Manuscript' https://www.abidemi.tv/learn/how-to-write-a-book/For 'Eyo', the book that was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize: https://amzn.to/2MscgKx
Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's lives converge as infighting among Wurche's people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on true events in precolonial Ghana, The Hundred Wells of Salaga offers a remarkable view of slavery and how the scramble for Africa affected the lives of everyday people.Born to two Ghanaian journalists, Ayesha Harruna Attah grew up in Accra and was educated Columbia University and NYU. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Asymptote Magazine, and the Caine Prize Writers’ 2010 Anthology. Her debut novel, Harmattan Rain, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2010. Ayesha was awarded the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for non-fiction and she currently lives in Senegal.Presented in partnership with CityLit Project.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.
Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that transforms her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's lives converge as infighting among Wurche's people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on true events in precolonial Ghana, The Hundred Wells of Salaga offers a remarkable view of slavery and how the scramble for Africa affected the lives of everyday people.Born to two Ghanaian journalists, Ayesha Harruna Attah grew up in Accra and was educated Columbia University and NYU. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Asymptote Magazine, and the Caine Prize Writers’ 2010 Anthology. Her debut novel, Harmattan Rain, was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2010. Ayesha was awarded the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for non-fiction and she currently lives in Senegal.Presented in partnership with CityLit Project.Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.Recorded On: Tuesday, February 12, 2019
In 2011, Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for Salvage the Bones, and last year, she became the first woman to ever win twice. This time it was for Sing, Unburied, Sing, an American epic that earned her comparisons to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison. As Leonie, a mother struggling with drug abuse, drives with her children to bring her husband home from Parchman Farm, Mississippi’s state penitentiary, she and her thirteen-year-old son Jojo are visited by two ghosts. While Leonie waits for visits from her dead brother, Jojo hears from a boy his own age, the ghost of a dead Parchman inmate who carries all the ugly history of the South with him in death.Ward is in conversation with Aminatta Forna, Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and author of five books, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning The Memory of Love and, most recently, Happiness.https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781501126062Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Critically acclaimed, two-time winner of the Miles Franklin award, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and numerous other literary awards, Alex Miller's new work, ‘The passage of love’ is an exquisitely personal novel of love and creativity, filled with rare wisdom and incisive observation.
Louis de Bernières, who lives in Norfolk, published his first novel in 1990 and was selected by Granta magazine as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993. Since then he has become well known internationally as a writer, with Captain Corelli's Mandolin winning the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Novel in 1994. His sixth novel, the acclaimed Birds Without Wings, came out in 2004. A Partisan's Daughter (2008) was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Notwithstanding: Stories from an English Village was published in Autumn 2009, followed by de Bernieres’ first collection of poetry, Imagining Alexandria: Poems in Memory of Constantinos Cavafis, in 2013. His major new novel, The Dust That Falls From Dreams, was published in July 2015, and his new collection of poems, Of Love and Desire, appeared in February 2016. As well as writing, de Bernieres plays the flute, mandolin and guitar. 5x15 brings together five outstanding individuals to tell of their lives, passions and inspirations. There are only two rules - no scripts and only 15 minutes each. Learn more about 5x15 events: 5x15stories.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/5x15stories Facebook: www.facebook.com/5x15stories Instagram: www.instagram.com/5x15stories
For lovers of Australian fiction, Alex Miller’s novels are essential reading, with writing that reveals his wit, wisdom and keen observations of life’s complexities. In conversation with author and poet Adrian Caesar, Alex Miller will reflect on how love, and the struggle to live a creative life, inspired his exquisitely personal new novel, The Passage of Love. Alex has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and is a two-time winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In association with Allen and Unwin
The New Quarterly—TNQ, for short—is a Canadian literary journal known for wit, warmth, and literary innovation. Our style is celebratory, and we’re well known for finding, as well as nurturing, distinctive voices, and for continuing to support writers throughout their career. We publish short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction that explores both the craft and the writing life. Watch for TNQ writers among those cited for National Magazine Awards, the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Journey Prize, and the Writers Trust Fiction Prize. Each issue brings our readers work by both emerging and established writers, and, while TNQ has always been an inclusive publication, we have renewed our commitment to encouraging writers who may be experiencing barriers regarding race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, or age to consider TNQ when they’re ready to submit their finest work. Pamela Mulloy has edited TNQ since 2011. She has a master of arts in studies in fiction from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom; has had short fiction published in the United Kingdom and Canada; and has been awarded the Waterloo Regional Arts Council award for fiction. Her novel, The Deserters, is due out in Spring of 2018 with Véhicule Press. She currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband and daughter Quotes from the Episode “I confess to being a slow thinker, a ruminator. I’m the one who thinks about it and has the idea after everybody has left the table. Social media is a challenge.” “I think that I understand that writing is a process and it sometimes requires a great deal of patience, and revisiting, and rethinking, things we’re not used to doing to be productive.“ “One of the things that we consider with the writers is that it’s a relationship with the writers. We’re actually investing in a writer when we choose to publish them. We hope that they will continue to submit to us and it becomes an ongoing relationship. That human element of the publishing process is really important. I’m always curious what the writer is doing in their wider writing life.“ “Quiet stories are the ones I’m often drawn to.” “In order to become a successful writer, you have to submit your work. It kinda raises the bar for your writing. It pushes you to get the best you can get.“ Episode Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Audio Editor: Meghan Bell Music: https://musicformakers.com/songs/the-return/ Production & Research Assistant: Gulnaz Saiyed Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
The New Quarterly—TNQ, for short—is a Canadian literary journal known for wit, warmth, and literary innovation. Our style is celebratory, and we’re well known for finding, as well as nurturing, distinctive voices, and for continuing to support writers throughout their career. We publish short fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction that explores both the craft and the writing life. Watch for TNQ writers among those cited for National Magazine Awards, the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Journey Prize, and the Writers Trust Fiction Prize. Each issue brings our readers work by both emerging and established writers, and, while TNQ has always been an inclusive publication, we have renewed our commitment to encouraging writers who may be experiencing barriers regarding race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, or age to consider TNQ when they’re ready to submit their finest work. Pamela Mulloy has edited TNQ since 2011. She has a master of arts in studies in fiction from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom; has had short fiction published in the United Kingdom and Canada; and has been awarded the Waterloo Regional Arts Council award for fiction. Her novel, The Deserters, is due out in Spring of 2018 with Véhicule Press. She currently resides in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband and daughter Quotes from the Episode “I confess to being a slow thinker, a ruminator. I’m the one who thinks about it and has the idea after everybody has left the table. Social media is a challenge.” “I think that I understand that writing is a process and it sometimes requires a great deal of patience, and revisiting, and rethinking, things we’re not used to doing to be productive.“ “One of the things that we consider with the writers is that it’s a relationship with the writers. We’re actually investing in a writer when we choose to publish them. We hope that they will continue to submit to us and it becomes an ongoing relationship. That human element of the publishing process is really important. I’m always curious what the writer is doing in their wider writing life.“ “Quiet stories are the ones I’m often drawn to.” “In order to become a successful writer, you have to submit your work. It kinda raises the bar for your writing. It pushes you to get the best you can get.“ Episode Credits Host: Rachel Thompson Audio Editor: Meghan Bell Music: https://musicformakers.com/songs/the-return/ Production & Research Assistant: Gulnaz Saiyed Produced by Room magazine and Rachel Thompson
The Worlds Literature Festival is a private space, where writers can debate and ask difficult questions and issue provocations in a safe, protected, inspiring environment. We're excited to provide a glimpse into the world of Worlds, with two provocations on the theme of (Up-)Staging Shakespeare. First we have Amit Chaudhuri: novelist, critic and musician. His latest novel is Odysseus Abroad. He's won more prizes than I have time to list, including Commonwealth Writers Prize, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia. Following Amit is Edward Wilson-Lee, whose first book, Shakespeare in Swahili-Land, is a travelogue and cultural history of East Africa which recovers the surprising story of the playwright's central role in the region's past. Edward teaches Shakespeare and Renaissance literature in Cambridge and is currently working on his second book.
Kabul—Ten Years After 9/11: After a car explodes in the city, a Japanese-American journalist discovers that its passengers were acquaintances—three fellow expats who had formed an unlikely love triangle—and becomes convinced that a deeper story lies behind the moment of violence. The investigation that follows takes the journalist from Kabul to Louisiana, Maine, Québec, and Dubai, from love to jealousy to hate—and acutely reveals how the lives of individuals overseas have become inseparable from the larger story of America’s imperial misadventures. About Deni Ellis Béchard Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of the novel Vandal Love, winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book; Cures for Hunger, a memoir about growing up with his father, who robbed banks; and Of Bonobos and Men, winner of the 2015 Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the LA Times, Salon, Pacific Standard, and Foreign Policy, and he has reported from India, Iraq, Colombia, Rwanda, the Congo, and Afghanistan.
Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri, read for Pindrop at the Royal Academy of Arts in February 2016 during the landmark exhibition, Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. Okri read one of his superb short stories followed by an audience Q&A. Ben Okri has published eight novels, including The Famished Road and Starbook, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded the OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore. He is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum.
The RA and Pin Drop welcomed Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri for an evening of short fiction and storytelling, inspired by the exhibition ‘Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse’. Ben Okri has published eight novels, including The Famished Road and Starbook, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded an OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore.
Rana Dasgupta won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book for his debut novel Solo. He is also the author of a collection of urban folktales, Tokyo Cancelled, which was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi is his first work of non-fiction. Born in Canterbury in 1971, he has lived in Delhi for 13 years. Also this week, writer Sarah Ditum talks about Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Susan Johnson is an author and staff writer at Qweekend. Susan has recently published her eighth novel, The Landing, which takes its name from a fictional lakeside community north of the Queensland capital of Brisbane, where all of the 200 or so residents intimately know each others’ business. In addition to her prolific fiction work, Susan has published two non-fiction books, including a memoir, and also works as a staff writer at The Courier-Mail’s Saturday magazine, Qweekend. I’m more familiar with her fine work in the magazine, but when we met at the News Queensland offices in mid-September, we spoke largely about her fiction writing. Our conversation also touches on her experiences with the shrinking sizes of author advances in recent years; her early career as a cadet journalist at The Courier-Mail, and how she later found her way back to the newspaper where she began; the hostility that creative people and artists tend to be met with whenever the topic of writers’ grants are discussed in public; and how she wrote herself into existence with her first novel, after first meticulously deconstructing her favourite authors to better understand how they wrote. Over the course of ten books and thirty years, Susan Johnson has been long-listed and short-listed for many national and international awards. Her first shortlist was for the 1991 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (for Flying Lessons), followed by the 1994 National Book Council’s Banjo Award (A Big Life) and the National Biography Award 2000 (A Better Woman). The Broken Book was shortlisted for the 2005 Nita B Kibble Award; Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; the Westfield/Waverly Library Literary Award, and a slew of other awards, including a long-list for the Miles Franklin and the International Dublin IMPAC Award. Her last novel, My Hundred Lovers, was published in 2012 to critical acclaim. Susan is an Adjunct Professor in Creative Writing at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She currently lives in Brisbane, from ten years in London, France and Greece. She is a feature writer at Qweekend magazine, The Courier-Mail. Show notes and links to Susan's writing discussed in this episode: http://penmanshippodcast.com/episode-11-susan-johnson/ Susan Johnson on Twitter: @SJreaders Penmanship on Twitter: @PenmanshipAU penmanshippodcast.com
Join acclaimed writer Steven Carroll, winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Award, and ABC radio presenter Louise Maher as they discuss Carroll’s latest novel, Forever Young. Forever Young is set against the tumultuous period of change and uncertainty that was Australia in 1977.
When Kate Grenville’s mother, Nance Russell, died she left behind many fragments of memoir. These were the starting point for One Life, the story of a woman whose life spanned a century of tumult and change. Nance’s story reflects the changing patterns of the twentieth century which offered a path to new freedoms and choices. One Life is an act of great imaginative sympathy, a deeply moving homage to her mother by one of Australia’s finest writers. It provides an illuminating window into Australia’s social history, including attitudes to Aborigines, the role of women and the impact of politics and class. “Evocative and fascinating, this brave and heartfelt tribute will appeal to anyone interested in their own family story, Australian history, or the lives of women”. Joanne Shields, Australian Books and Publishing. Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her bestselling novel The Secret River received the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. A TV mini-series based on the novel will be broadcast in late 2015. The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places and Joan Makes History. Grenville is an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. Kate Grenville was joined in conversation by Canberra author Marion Halligan. Halligan is one of Australia’s best known literary figures and has been awarded an AM for services to literature.
Lawrence Hill talks about his book, The Book of Negroes, which is being reissued in paperback to coincide with the BET miniseries airing in February.In The Book of Negroes, Hill brings to life the journey of Aminata Diallo, an African, a South Carolinian, a New Yorker, a Nova Scotian, and a Londoner, as she travels from continent to continent and from freedom to enslavement. She becomes the embodiment of the African diaspora.Lawrence Hill is the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction. The Book of Negroes (formerly published as Someone Knows My Name) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The BET miniseries, directed by Clement Virgo, was filmed in South Africa and Canada and stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., Jane Alexander, Louis Gossett, Jr., and Aunjanue Ellis.The Brown Lecture Series is supported by a generous grant from the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Family Foundation.
A husband and wife go for a walk in the woods; full of energy, the wife starts to walk on the tips of her toes - suddenly she takes off, across the forest. Startled, the husband calls out to her - but too late. She has transformed herself into a fox. If that unsettling story sounds familiar, it's because it won the BBC National Short story award in 2013; you might have heard Mrs Fox read on Radio 4. Its author, Sarah Hall, was already an accomplished novelist. She was born in Cumbria in 1974, and her first novel, Haweswater, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel, among other prizes. The awards have come thick and fast for every book since. She's been shortlisted and longlisted for the Booker Prize, with The Electric Michelangelo and How to Paint a Dead Man, and her 2007 novel, The Carhullan Army, was listed as one of The Times' 100 Best Books of the Decade. Sarah's latest novel, The Wolf Border, about a plan to reintroduce wolves to the north of England, is published this month. Sarah's music choices include Puccini, the Welsh lullaby Suo Gan, Dvorak's Song to the Moon, and others that reflect her love of bluegrass and film music. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.
Writer Ben Okri chooses his favourite music and talks to Michael Berkeley about the power of stories and their central place in human life. The author of the Booker Prize-winning The Famished Road, he has written many other acclaimed novels - the latest being The Age of Magic - and he's also published collections of poetry, short stories and essays. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Ben Okri has been awarded an OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. His choices of music include Wagner, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Pachelbel's Canon, and one of his poems set to music by Paul Simon's son Harper. Producer: Jane Greenwood A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.
This podcast is part of our Rupture, Crisis and Transformation series looking at new perspectives in the field of US Studies, drawn from the event of the same name at Birkbeck, University of London. It is the keynote presentation from world-renowned author Caryl Phillips. The conference organiser Anna Hartnell, explains Anna Hartnell: Caryl Phillips is a major contemporary writer whose large body of fiction and non-fiction explores various aspects of his own Caribbean, British and now American identities. Though coming in from a different perspective from Wai Chee Dimock [the other keynote speaker at the conference, whose presentation you can find here], he has been involved in thinking about the United States, in various de-centered ways, that are really helpful for this particular conference. Bart Moore-Gilbert: Caryl is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking writers around today. Born in the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, he was brought up in Leeds and studied Literature at Oxford before moving eventually to the US. He has worked for a number of institutions in the US, and is currently professor of English at Yale. He is actually a colleague of our first keynote today. Caryl’s complex background of multiple cultural affiliations have given him a very distinctive and authoritative perspectives on the range of issues which are germane to this conference, including the ways in which racial, class, national diasporas, and national identities, get re-articulated in times of rupture, crisis and transformation. He has explored these preoccupations in a wide range of genres, including drama, fiction, screenplays and a variety of non-fictional modes, notably autobiography, travel writing and literal criticism, genres which characteristically co-exist in a relation of productive tension and collaboration in much of his work. This dual track pattern of output is reflected in his two most recent books, the novel ‘In the Falling Snow’ of 2009 and the non-fiction collection ‘Colour me English’ of 2011. The importance of Caryl’s work has been recognized in a number of prestigious awards, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, James Tate Black Memorial Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. So distinguished is Caryl’s CV that I thought I had to find one blot on it and eventually I discovered that he is a passionate supporter of Leeds United. [Laughter] But we can forgive him that, I’m sure. So, the title of Caryl’s talk is ‘The Star Spangled Banner‘ and I think this is going to offer a writerly rather than academic perspective on some of the new directions in US Studies, which are suggested by notions of crises, rupture and transformation. So, please give a big hand to Caryl Phillips. [Applause] Caryl Phillips: Those of us who grew up in Britain have been spared the ordeal of having to hear the dreary tones of the national anthem ‘God Save the Queen’, on any kind of a regular basis. Dating back to 1619, the author of the national anthem is unknown, but the anthem first appeared in a published version in 1744. I’m just about old enough to remember when God Save the Queen was played at the end of films in the cinema. At such moments, we were expected to stand to attention, before filing out of the auditorium and onto the streets. Mercifully, this practice became obsolete before I was out of short trousers. In recent years, I’ve seldom had to endure the drone of the national anthem. As a nation, we hear it before the kick-off of England football matches. We also hear it on the rare occasions, at least prior to 2012, that a British athlete won a gold medal at an athletics championship or the Olympics. We might hear a snatch of it on the news whenever the monarch turns up on an official visit. But the fact is, God Save the Queen probably reached the height of its popularity during the heyday of the British Empire when nearly all the colonial territories utilised it as their national theme tune.
No Artist is Slave to the State Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Zakes Mda is regarded as one of the most important novelists to have emerged on South Africa’s literary scene since the end of apartheid. The author of more than 20 novels and plays, Mda is now resident in the USA where he is a professor at Ohio University. He joins us today to discuss his output, including his new mystic-realist epic The Sculptors of Mapungubwe. Part of our Voices from South Africa series of events.
Sydney Writers’ Festival and Ideas at the House presents one of Australia’s finest writers Peter Carey. The only Australian to have twice won the Booker Prize, Peter speaks with Jennifer Byrne about his extraordinary career and new novel Amnesia. With uncanny timeliness, Amnesia explores the relationship between Australia and America, from the Battle of Brisbane to computer hackers, via the Dismissal, Pine Gap and the great Australian forgetfulness. Amnesia is Peter at his best: dark, funny, profound and clearly one of our most engaged and radical writers. “Mr Carey is one of the finest living writers in English. His best books satisfy both intellectually and emotionally; he is lyrical yet never forgets the imperative to entertain.”- The Economist Peter Carey has published 18 books and his work has been translated into 24 languages. Since his first collection of short-stories, The Fat Man in History, was published, Carey has won numerous awards including the Miles Franklin Award three times (for Bliss, Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs); the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (for Jack Maggs and True History of the Kelly Gang); and the Booker Prize (for both Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang).
Sia Figiel is a novelist, painter and poet who won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Fiction (SE Asia/Pacific Region). Her choice of Heritage Track LOTA NU'U, sung here by the Samoa Teachers' Choir, evokes deep emotions not only in her, but in many Samoans across the world, and is almost an unofficial national anthem, dissolving boundaries and bringing them, and all Pacific peoples, together as children of the great ocean, Moana.
Writer Jacob Ross was short-listed for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and in 2011 was awarded Grenada's highest award for his contribution to literature. His choice of Heritage Track- the 1960s calypso Dan is the Man in the Van by The Mighty Sparrow- reminds him of growing up in Grenada and the schooling he received in what was then a British colony, full of nonsensical nursery rhymes and images of seasons unknown in the Caribbean. He paints a picture of Grenadians as being both laid-back and determined in their attitude to life, and nurturing high hopes as their star sprinter, Kirani James, heads for Glasgow this summer.
Deni Béchard was born in British Columbia to Québécois and American parents and grew up in both Canada and the United States. He has also traveled in over fifty countries. His recently-published memoir, Cures for Hunger, describes growing up with his father who was a bank robber, and was both an IndieNext pick and Amazon Canada’s editor’s pick as one of the best memoir/biography of 2012. Empty Hands, Open Arms, a book about conservation in the Congo rainforest, was published in October 2013. His first novel, Vandal Love, was published in French and Arabic, and won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, both for the best first book in Canada and for the best overall first book in the British Commonwealth. It was also nominated for Le Prix du Grand Public Salon du Livre Montréal / La Presse, 2008, as well as the French version of Canada Reads (Le Combat des Livres, 2009), and in 2012 was on Oprah’s Book Club’s summer reading list. He has been a fellow at MacDowell, Jentel, Ledig House, the Anderson Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Edward Albee Foundation. He has done freelance reporting from Northern Iraq as well as from Afghanistan, and has written for a number of magazines and newspapers, among them the LA Times, Outside, Salon, VQR, the National Post, Maisonneuve, Le Devoir, the Harvard Review, and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He is introduced by Rachid Aadnani, Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Wellesley College.
JO SHAPCOTT, poet, has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition. Her most recent collection, Of Mutability, was published in 2010 and won the Costa Book Award. In 2011 Jo Shapcott was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Jo is patron of Medicine Unboxed.
JO SHAPCOTT, poet, has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition. Her most recent collection, Of Mutability, was published in 2010 and won the Costa Book Award. In 2011 Jo Shapcott was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Jo is patron of Medicine Unboxed.
JO SHAPCOTT, poet, has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition. Her most recent collection, Of Mutability, was published in 2010 and won the Costa Book Award. In 2011 Jo Shapcott was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Jo is patron of Medicine Unboxed.
Ashley Hay is a Brisbane author of both fiction and non-fiction books. Her latest novel is The Railwayman’s Wife, a story set in the NSW coastal town of Thirroul in the years following WWII. Ashley’s first novel, The Body in the Clouds, was nominated for several awards when it was published in 2010, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She has also written four books of narrative non-fiction and her essays, short stories and journalism regularly appear in Australian journals and anthologies. She has had stories published in The Monthly magazine, The Bulletin, Best Australian Essays and Heat.
The final in our series of podcasts featuring the Best of Young British Novelists 4, we hear from Tahmima Anam. Anam is the author of the Bengal Trilogy, which chronicles three generations of the Haque family from the Bangladesh war of independence to the present day. Her debut novel, A Golden Age, was awarded the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. It was followed in 2011 by The Good Muslim. ‘Anwar Gets Everything’, in the issue, is an excerpt from the final instalment of the trilogy, Shipbreaker, published in 2014 by Canongate in the UK and HarperCollins in the US. Here she spoke to Saskia Vogel about making a home in London and migration.
Sulari Gentill’s latest novel is Paving the New Road, the fourth book in the Rowland Sinclair historical crime series. It is the second book in the series she’s released in 2012 and has just been awarded the Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for the best crime novel by a woman. The first book in the series, A Few Right Thinking Men, was nominated in 2011 for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel in the South Easy Asia and Pacific. Interview by Danielle Willams, course manager of Sydney Writers' Centre. www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au
The Context of White Supremacy welcomes Kate Grenville live from Australia. Ms. Grenville is a prolific writer and winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and Britain's Orange Prize. Ms. Grenville has written an extensive amount of "Plantation Fiction" - fabricated accounts of the slavery phase of White Supremacy. We'll attempt to understand the purpose of these novels, as well as her views on the current state of White Supremacy in Australia. Check out her website at: http://KateGrenville.com INVEST in The COWS - http://paypal.me/GusTRenegade CALL IN NUMBER: 641.715.3640 CODE 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p
Kirsty Young's castaway is the author Vikram Seth. His novel A Suitable Boy was nearly a decade in the writing, but it was a huge and immediate hit and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He is now working on a follow-up novel called A Suitable Girl. He's due to finish work on it in 2013 - 20 years after the original work was published. The pace of work, he admits, is slow: "The sound of deadlines pushing past is one of the sounds that authors are most familiar with - it's very much in the gestational period." Producer: Leanne Buckle.
Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa. He came to Britain as a student in 1968 and now teaches literature at the University of Kent. He is associate editor of the journal Wasafiri. His first three novels, Memory of Departure (1987), Pilgrims Way (1988) and Dottie (1990), document the immigrant experience in contemporary Britain from different perspectives. His fourth novel, Paradise (1994), is set in colonial East Africa during the First World War and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Admiring Silence (1996) tells the story of a young man who leaves Zanzibar and emigrates to England where he marries and becomes a teacher. A return visit to his native country 20 years later profoundly affects his attitude towards both himself and his marriage. By the Sea (2001), is narrated by Saleh Omar, an elderly asylum-seeker living in an English seaside town. In 2007 he edited The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie. His novel Desertion (2005)was shortlisted for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize. His latest novel is The Last Gift (2011). The Last Gift: One day, long before the troubles, he slipped away without saying a word to anyone and never went back. And then another day, forty three years later, he collapsed just inside the front door of his house in a small English town. It was late in the day when it happened, on his way home after work, but it was also late in the day altogether. He had left things for too long and there was no one to blame for it but himself.
Debut novelist, Alistair Morgan, discusses getting published, dark themes in his first novel and which famous writers he thinks would win in a fight. He also discusses working in advertising and obstacles for self-publishers. Sleeper's Wake is shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and received the 2009 Plimpton Prize.
Chris Cleave was born in London and spent his early years in Cameroon. He studied Experimental Psychology at Balliol College, Oxford, and now writes a column for the Guardian newspaper. His debut novel Incendiary won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and is now a feature film. Chris lives in London with his wife and two children. We met to talk about his engaging, important new novel Little Bee. Topics discussed include masks, truth-telling, trauma, trust, happiness, the struggle to survive, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and its deficiencies, asylum seekers are true heroes, engaging with the developing world, people in transition, life-changing events, sexual adventurousness, making sense of life retrospectively, inane reality TV shows and the need for refugees to tell their heroic stories convincingly.
Vikram Chandra's best-selling Sacred Games was published in 2007. His previous works include Love and Longing in Bombay and Red Earth and Pouring Rain. The New York Times has praised "the Dickensian sweep" of his depictions of life in Mumbai, and Kirkus Reviews raves, "Chandra's writing is so elegant and so irresistible, it elevates the classic cops-and-robbers story to new heights." He is the winner of the Crossword Prize for English Fiction, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the David Higham Prize, and the Paris Review Discovery prize. He currently divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, California, where he teaches creative writing at the University of California. The location of this event is UC Berkeley, 190 Doe Library For more information see the Story Hour website Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.
Vikram Chandra's best-selling Sacred Games was published in 2007. His previous works include Love and Longing in Bombay and Red Earth and Pouring Rain. The New York Times has praised "the Dickensian sweep" of his depictions of life in Mumbai, and Kirkus Reviews raves, "Chandra's writing is so elegant and so irresistible, it elevates the classic cops-and-robbers story to new heights." He is the winner of the Crossword Prize for English Fiction, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the David Higham Prize, and the Paris Review Discovery prize. He currently divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, California, where he teaches creative writing at the University of California. The location of this event is UC Berkeley, 190 Doe Library For more information see the Story Hour website Support for this series is provided by the University Library and the Department of English.
Ann-Marie MacDonald's first novel, Fall On Your Knees, became a Canadian and international publishing sensation with upwards of one million copies sold. Along with critical acclaim, the book won the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, became an Oprah Book Club selection, and has been sold in over 20 countries. Her second novel, The Way the Crow Flies, was another instant bestseller that has received international acclaim. Her works for the theatre include the play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), which has enjoyed more than a hundred productions worldwide. Ann Marie has also acted extensively on stage and screen, where her work has garnered many awards, including the Gemini. Most recently, her play Belle Moral: A Natural History ran this past summer at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Never one to mince her words, Ann-Marie is sure to provide a provocative glimpse into the Artist in Society. We're honoured that she will be joining us.
Australian Tim Winton wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer (1982), at the age of 19. It won the Australian Vogel National Literary Award. Born in Perth, in 1960, he is the author of Shallows (1986), a novel set in a whaling town, and Cloudstreet (1991), the story of two working-class families rebuilding their lives. Both won Miles Franklin Awards. The Riders (1995) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won a Commonwealth Writers Prize. He is also the author of two collections of short stories, Scission and Other Stories (1987) and Minimum of Two (1987), and co-author of several travel books about Australia, including Land's Edge (1993). His novel Dirt Music (2001), was shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize. I spoke with him during the Toronto International Writers Festival about his latest book The Turning, a series of linked stories. He seemed tired, a bit bummed about having been away from home for so long. The bloody tape ran out right in the middle of a lovely story he was telling about his converting wood from an old weir into a set of bookshelves for his library. Tim is an extremely likable, self effacing man with interesting ideas about the relationship between writing and music, as you will hear if you choose to listen…
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