Q&A with Peter May
Interview by Harriet H: Runaway is quite a different kind of book from your most recent novels, being both less dark (or perhaps dark in a different way) and not set on…
The Art of Memoir and Narrative Non-Fiction
By Neil Ansell I am the author of two books of narrative non-fiction. Both are memoir, but are equally likely to find themselves shelved as nature writing or travel writing….
Reading for Other Worlds
By Stefanie Hollmichel It has been a great year for space travel: the Philae Comet Lander, NASA’s test of its new Orion spacecraft, the ongoing discoveries of the Mars rover,…
An Interview with Sophia Tobin, Author of The Widow’s Confession
Questions from Victoria 1. I found the two American cousins in The Widow’s Confession very evocative and enigmatic characters – what was your inspiration for their part of the story? It was…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Anthony Trollope
Compiled by Harriet 1. Born in 1815, Trollope had a miserable childhood. His father lost all his money, he was bullied at school, and he contemplated suicide when he was…
Adèle Geras – A Life in Books
Interview by Victoria Adèle Geras and I had an unexpected chance to bond before we ever met. We were both on our way to a café in a south Cambridgeshire village,…
Translator’s Perspective: An ‘Ordinary’ Christmas
By Emily Boyce During the festive season, Versailles sparkled with inevitability While translating Pascal Garnier’s novel The Islanders, set over several days in December in a snowy Versailles and described by…
Five Fascinating Facts about… E.F. Benson
By Guy Fraser-Sampson. 1. His father was Archbishop of Canterbury. Through this connection Benson gained privileged access to high society, including royalty and the aristocracy. He remained friends with some members of…
An Interview with Barbara Nadel
SNB: By way of introduction would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Barbara: I was born and brought up in the east end of London. Back then, in…
Hotel Alpha Stories: 80 Alpha Bar, 2004 by Mark Watson
Mark Watson’s project, Hotel Alpha, the novel of which we review in our fiction section here, is more than just a book. The Hotel Alpha website had 100 short stories to read, one…
Spotlight on Publishing: Buried River Press
1. Can you tell us a little bit about how the imprint was started? We launched Buried River Press in spring of this year, and have published seven titles to…
The Eds Discuss: Book Covers
By the Shiny New Books Editors Never mind the old saw, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’, how important IS cover design, bearing in mind the recent issues over…
The other stories in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: A translator’s perspective
By Rosamund Bartlett We are so used to seeing Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in terms of the tragic fate of his heroine that it is sometimes easy to forget how much else goes…
A Moment for the Short Story
By David Hebblethwaite Short stories are in our bones. They are often the first fiction we read or hear: fairy tales, bedtime stories – and at school (for example), they…
Spotlight on Publishers: Unbound
Is crowd-funding the future of publishing? Annabel talks to Unbound… Before we get into our chat fully, could you explain briefly for those readers who don’t know you, how Unbound…
Five Fascinating Facts about… Frances Hodgson Burnett
Compiled by Harriet Devine 1. Frances was born near Manchester, in England. Her father was a successful ironmonger, but her family fell on hard times after his death when she…
Shiny New Author: Questions for Angus Watson
In the first of a new series in which we interview debut authors, Victoria talked to Angus Watson, author of Age of Iron. V: When did you first realise you wanted…
Jen Campbell talks about Bookshops…
“I like bookshops,” a little girl once said to me in the middle of our own bookshop – an organised chaos of antiquarian children’s books in north London. “I like…
An Interview with Tom Barbash
Tell us about your apprenticeship in art – what experiences have made you the writer you are today? My first real job after college was as a reporter in a…
Upcoming Books into Films: Autumn 2014
By Diana Cheng The harvest of films releasing in the latter part of the year for me is the compensation for fallen leaves and chilly weather. Indeed, movies coming out…
Behind The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson
The heroine of the Resistance may have been rising ninety, but she was still wearing racy red shoes. “Not so many years,” she said, “but a time that marked us…
Monique Roffey – A Profile
By Victoria Best Monique Roffey has been on a creative roll for the best part of a decade and has seen her work rise to prominence and gain critical acclaim;…
Q&A with Mira Jacob
Questions by Victoria 1. Can you recall the first time you knew you wanted to be a writer? In second grade, we made our own blank-paged, cloth bound books. I…
Reading Scotland
Selected by Victoria Best You’d think everything there is to say about Scotland has been said in the media over the past couple of months. But there’s been a suspicious…