Questions for Laurie Graham
Interview by Victoria Best First of all, I have to say that Annabel, my co-editor, and I are both enormous fans of your books. [Laurie: THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!!] We’ve both been…
To Come Back Increased: Hild by Nicola Griffith
Written by Nicola Griffith For me a good novel is one that draws me in and puts me right there, right then, with the characters: I walk where they walk,…
Nick Rennison talks about the Victorians…
By Nick Rennison What is it about us and the Victorians? Here we are in 2014, in a world of smart phones, Twitter and Facebook, and yet, everywhere you look…
An Interview with Tim Winton
Tim Winton is arguably Australia’s greatest living writer. Born in Perth in 1960, he has written novels, short story collections, non-fiction, books for children, plays and television scripts. He has…
Q&A with Ned Beauman
Questions by Simon Thomas Simon: How did you get the idea for Glow? Ned: There were two subjects I had been wanting to write about for a long time. One was…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Robert Aickman
Winkled out by Annabel Gaskell 1. Although we’ve come to know Aickman as an author, he was a prominent conservationist. In 1946, he was a co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association….
‘The Night Watchman’ and the Dilemma of Living in Portugal by Richard Zimler
Imagine a country with the lowest salaries in Western Europe, where about 40 percent of young people are unemployed, and where 50,000 shops went out of business in 2011 and…
The Eds discuss… the Man Booker longlist and literary prizes in general
By the Shiny New Books Editors The four SNB Editors had a round robin e-mail discussion about our reactions to the announcement of the Man Booker Prize longlist going around…
Q&A with Mike Ripley
Questions by Harriet Devine Harriet: I really enjoyed reading Mr Campion’s Farewell, and, as a lifetime fan of Allingham, I wasn’t sure if I would. But I’m full of curiosity as…
Jonathan Smith on his book Wilfred and Eileen
Written by Jonathan Smith Wilfred and Eileen was well received in the literary pages in 1976. The novel was dramatized on Radio 4 in 1983 and then serialized on BBC TV…
The Broken Landscape of Berlin by Ben Fergusson
Written by Ben Fergusson Berlin is full of holes. Literally. The moment you notice them, you begin to see them everywhere. Deep starbursts in stonework, plaster and brick. They are…
An Interview with Joanna Rakoff
By Victoria Best My Salinger Year was unquestionably one of the best books I’ve read this year – poignant, funny, real, warm – you can read my review here. The author, Joanna…
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) – A Biographical Note
Written by Harriet Devine. She will love deeply – suffer terribly – she will have glorious moments to compensate. Emily Byrd Starr, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s most autobiographical heroine, remembered these…
Never Mind the World Cup, Let’s Read Around Brazil!
A survey of some Brazilian novels in translation by Annabel Gaskell, with help from Stuart Allen I don’t know about you, but I’m distinctly underwhelmed by the World Cup, and…
Maggie Gee on bringing Virginia Woolf to 21st-Century Manhattan
Questions by Simon Thomas Simon: I love Virginia Woolf so much that I felt nervous about reading Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, but I was really, really impressed. Your love of her…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Alexander Pushkin
Written by Karen Langley 1. His matrilineal great grandfather was a Black African Page brought over to Russia as a slave. Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781) was kidnapped and taken to Russia…
An Interview with Heather O’Neill
Interview by Victoria Best I was fortunate enough to catch up with Canadian Heather O’Neill, author of The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, over a skype IM call when she was…
Philipp Meyer and Linda Spalding talk to Kirsty Wark at Hay
By Linda Spalding The Hay Festival is mythic to Canadians. What I mean is that we all covet an invitation. Mine came by email a few months before the event…
A Short Interview with Bethan Roberts
Interview by Annabel Shiny’s Fiction Editor Annabel catches up with Bethan Roberts, author of Mother Island reviewed here. Annabel: Baby-snatching, child abduction, particularly when a child is too young to fend for…
Reading Cornwall
Written by Jane Carter It’s holiday reading time, so we asked a Cornish blogger to look at some of her favourite books set in Cornwall – and it also felt…
Spotlight on Publishers: Peirene Press
Written by Meike Ziervogel Glittering Gems in the Sea of the Human Imagination “I read, therefore I write, therefore I publish.” Before I started up as a publisher, I was…
On Sisters of Treason by Elizabeth Fremantle
I have always been fascinated in the forgotten lives of women in history and Sisters of Treason (the second in my Tudor trilogy) exposes the lives of three such women. The novel…
On Translating Boel Westin’s Biography of Tove Jansson – by translator Silvester Mazzarella
I am ashamed to admit that I lived in Helsinki (in Swedish Helsingfors), for more than twenty years during Tove Jansson’s lifetime without ever meeting her or learning very much…
The Bookshop That Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw
In early 2011 I realised the bookshop I’d been running for the last two years would probably have to close. It operated from a converted narrowboat permanently moored in a…