The annual event known as ‘Super Thursday’, when most of the hardbacks aimed at the Christmas market are published, promises big names and a boon for the industry
A book festival is set to celebrate independent literature in Hackney this October.
Haggerston's Burley Fisher Books, which was crowned the best indie.
Rashmi Narayan
Hackney-based Kate Wills has written about her experiences of travelling.
- Credit: Kate Wills
Travelling solo as a result of a heartbreak or even a divorce may sound very much like the storyline of Eat, Pray, Love.
However, Hackney-based travel writer Kate Wills brings a great element of reality and humour in her latest book. Leaving the UK may still seem far-fetched for many of us despite some countries being on the green list, so reading about travel for now transports us to a happier world and Kate’s sojourns do tug at the heartstrings for those who love a little adventure.
Industry Notes: Short Story Awards in Spain and the United Kingdom
The Madrid-based Desperate Literature program and the BBC National Short Story Award open submissions and name their 2021 jurors.
At Madrid’s Desperate Literature bookshop on the Calle Campomanes. Image: Desperate Literature
Short Fiction Week
Amid the churn of early-year publishing awards programs and their many announcements, certain swirls and eddies always turn up as various programs’ focal formats cluster together. This, it turns out, is Short Fiction Week.
Today (January 14) in Madrid, the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize is opening its fourth year’s submissions and announcing its jurors.
A Promised Land sold 66,531 copies in the week to 19 December, not enough for the former US president to match his wife Michelle Obama’s feat two years ago, when she took the UK’s Christmas crown. The last adult novel to be Christmas No 1 was Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol in 2009.
Osman also beat David Walliams, who has been the No 1 author for three of the last four Christmases. His latest children’s novel, Code Name Bananas, which is set during the second world war, came in third having sold 55,129 copies, while Pinch of Nom food bloggers Kate Allinson and Kay Featherstone’s third cookbook, Quick and Easy, came in fourth.