Adrienne Vaughan was on family holiday and reportedly fell overboard when speedboat collided with a sailboat
Adrienne Vaughan, the 45-year-old president of the US branch of the Bloomsbury publishing house, has been killed after a collision between a speedboat and a 45-metre sailboat on Italy’s Amalfi coast.
Vaughan was on holiday in Italy with her husband and two children when the collision happened on Thursday.
Continue reading...HarperCollins ‘sincerely apologises’ to doctor for claims about Sydney hospital in ABC journalist Steve Cannane’s book
A long-running defamation case sparked by the ABC journalist Steve Cannane’s 2016 book on Scientology has ended with a confidential settlement and an apology.
Fair Game: The Incredible Untold Story of Scientology in Australia included a range of claims about the use of a controversial psychiatric treatment – deep sleep therapy – at Sydney’s Chelmsford private hospital in the 1960s and 70s.
Continue reading...The winner will receive £1,000, and have their story featured on the Guardian website
A short story competition run by the Guardian and publisher 4th Estate is open for entries from unpublished writers of colour living in the UK.
The winner of the 4thWrite prize will receive £1,000, a one-day publishing workshop with 4th Estate and publication of their story on the Guardian website.
Continue reading...Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS will be out on 9 July, ending feverish speculation that the previously untitled book was a Taylor Swift memoir
The guessing game began this week when a mysteriously untitled book, scheduled for publication in July and known only as “4C Untitled Flatiron Nonfiction Summer 2023”, appeared. It quickly became a bestseller when Taylor Swift fans began feverishly speculating that it was her surprise memoir.
But the mystery has been solved, with publishing house Flatiron Books bringing forward their announcement by a month to reveal the book is actually by another musical powerhouse: the K-pop boyband BTS.
Continue reading...Éditions la Fabrique says foreign rights manager Ernest Moret was held for several hours and asked ‘disturbing questions’ about his political opinions
The French publishing house whose employee was arrested on terror charges on his way to London book fair has said it is “chilling” that he was asked by British detectives about the authors published by his company.
Ernest Moret was approached by two plainclothes officers at St Pancras station on Monday evening, after arriving by train from Paris. He was arrested, after six hours of questioning, for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer.
Continue reading...Founded by two translators – one American, one British – the Salt initiative will provide mentorships, funding and a south Asia-focused literary translation school
A new project to help bring the “extraordinarily rich” literature of south Asia to English-speaking countries will launch this summer, it has been announced.
The cross-continental South Asian Literature in Translation (Salt) project has been set up by the University of Chicago, in partnership with the American Literary Translators Association, English PEN, Words Without Borders and the British Council. The multi-year project will try to “strengthen each part of the publishing chain across the English-speaking world”, the University of Chicago has said.
Continue reading...Comments range from ‘the monarchy is valuable’ to ‘Harry and Meghan are having their cake and eating it’
Last week, the tell-all autobiography by Prince Harry, Spare, was released and sold a combined 1,430,000 copies on its first day on sale in the US, Canada and the UK.
Here, readers from Commonwealth countries share their thoughts on Prince Harry, his new book and whether the controversies surrounding the royal family have changed their views towards the monarchy.
Continue reading...Al Saqi Books in London, which was established in 1978, blames closure on rise in prices of Arabic-language books and ‘detrimental’ effect of Brexit
Europe’s largest specialist bookseller for Middle Eastern books, based in London, has been forced to close because of the hike in prices of Arabic-language books and because Brexit has been “detrimental” to its business.
Al Saqi Books in Bayswater opened in 1978, and sells books on the Middle East and north Africa in English, and on all subjects in Arabic.
Continue reading...It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, out next year, will argue the world needs to ‘recognise that economic rights are human rights’
Former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is to publish a book outlining “a vision of what would be possible if the political revolution took place”.
It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism will be published by Penguin Random House in February 2023.
Continue reading...Publisher who founded Virago Press began as a campaigning outsider who introduced UK readers to authors including Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood
Carmen Callil, the publisher and writer who championed female writers and transformed the canon of English literature, has died of leukemia in London on Monday aged 84. The news was confirmed by her agent.
Callil began as a campaigning outsider, founding the feminist imprint Virago Press, where she published contemporary bestsellers including Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou and Angela Carter. She challenged the male-dominated canon of English literature by bringing back into print a list of modern classics by authors including Antonia White, Willa Cather and Rebecca West, eventually becoming a pillar of the literary establishment. She was made a dame in 2017, served as a member of the Booker prize committee and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Continue reading...Sotheby’s describes 17th-century Cervantes editions as a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity for collectors
One day in the early 1930s, a young Bolivian diplomat named Jorge Ortiz Linares walked into the illustrious Maggs Bros bookshop in London to ask if they might have a particularly fine edition of Don Quixote for sale.
But even for Ortiz Linares – a dedicated bibliophile who also happened to be the son-in-law of Simón Patiño, the Bolivian tin magnate nicknamed the Andean Rockefeller – the answer was a polite no.
Continue reading...Ghostwritten book, with interviews conducted mostly during ‘peak rage’, expected to be published by end of year
The manuscript is, reportedly, written; the ink now dry. Publication is said to be on course to capitalise on the lucrative Christmas market.
Few crumbs, if any, of the contents of the Duke of Sussex’s much-anticipated memoirs have so far emerged. “It’s juicy, that’s for sure,” one source told the Page Six website, with another adding: “There is some content in there that should make his family nervous.”
Continue reading...The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time author said his choice was ‘pretty instant’ after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade
Author Mark Haddon is to donate all future royalties from US sales of his bestselling book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to the National Network of Abortion Funds.
Haddon made the announcement on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, saying that from now until the supreme court’s “overturning of Roe v Wade is reversed, or some equivalent action is taken” he would be donating all US royalties from the book.
Continue reading...Contestants will enter a writers’ retreat and be given 30 days to write a novel while completing ‘live-wire’ challenges
Reality TV producers have exhausted singers, dancers, drag artists, potters, tailors, and beautiful young people hoping to find love. Now, it seems, the spotlight has fallen on writers. This week, a call has appeared on social media for contestants to apply to be on the pilot of a new show called America’s Next Great Author (ANGA).
Billed as “the groundbreaking reality TV show for writers”, ANGA will give its contestants one minute to pitch their novels to a panel of judges that includes New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds, Fox5 TV presenter Angie Goff, and stage writer and comedian Marga Gomez.
Continue reading...Two previously unseen short stories by Jackson, rated by Stephen King as one of the great horror fiction writers, are to appear in US magazine the Strand
Two previously unpublished short stories by Shirley Jackson, the queen of gothic fiction, have been released.
Charlie Roberts and Only Stand and Wait were both published on 9 June in Strand magazine, a US-based print magazine that publishes short fiction and interviews.
Continue reading...Capitalism and Slavery, by the future first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago Eric Williams, argues that the abolition of slavery was motivated by economic, not moral, concerns
A book of unpalatable truths about Britain’s slave trade has become a UK bestseller, almost 80 years after author Eric Williams was told by a British publisher: “I would never publish such a book, for it would be contrary to the British tradition.”
Capitalism and Slavery was first published in the US in 1944. It was published in the UK by the independent publisher André Deutsch in 1964, with a number of reprints over the next 20 years.
Continue reading...Former model Jack Guinness caught up in furore over Mississippi mayor’s attempt to withhold funding for library until ‘homosexual materials’ are withdrawn
A British writer, presenter and former model says he is shocked to find himself at the centre of an unprecedented wave of book banning in the US.
A Mississippi mayor has told the Madison County Library to remove LGBTQ+ books from its shelves or lose funding. One of the books singled out as an example was The Queer Bible, a collection of LGBTQ+ history essays edited by Jack Guinness. Ridgeland’s Republican mayor, Gene McGee, has refused to release funds to the library until “homosexual materials” are withdrawn.
Continue reading...F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece is the latest title to appear in a cheap modern version after copyright expires
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” It is one of the most memorable literary payoffs in history, the end of F Scott Fitzgerald’s defining novel of the 20th century, The Great Gatsby.
Yet this famous ending will be lost to many readers thanks to the proliferation of substandard editions, one of which loses the last three pages and instead finishes tantalisingly halfway through a paragraph.
Continue reading...Filippo Bernardini is accused of impersonating publishing figures to steal manuscripts, in scam that has stumped authors and editors for years
A mysterious fraudster who impersonated publishers and agents to steal book manuscripts in an international phishing scam may have finally been caught, with the FBI arresting a 29-year-old man at John F Kennedy airport in New York on Wednesday.
Filippo Bernardini, an Italian citizen who worked at UK publisher Simon & Schuster, was arrested upon landing in the US on Wednesday. The FBI alleged that Bernardini had “impersonated, defrauded, and attempted to defraud, hundreds of individuals” to obtain unpublished and draft works.
Continue reading...Scribner has responded to the news that Anthony Broadwater has been cleared of the crime at the centre of Lucky by ceasing to distribute the book
Alice Sebold’s publisher Scribner is pulling her 1999 memoir Lucky from shelves after a man was cleared of the rape at the heart of it.
Anthony Broadwater was convicted of raping Sebold in 1982, and spent 16 years in prison. He was exonerated last week after a re-examination of the case found serious flaws in his arrest and trial.
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