Book festival organisers are reporting difficulties when it comes to booking big names for their events. Are festivals destined to play second fiddle to commercial event companies?
On Friday, while most of the country was settling down to watch Radiohead perform in a field in Somerset, a row was breaking out in another field in Wiltshire. To we historians this is not Glastonbury weekend but Chalke Valley weekend; time for the country's biggest history festival. Read more
A Twitter storm erupted last week over the lack of people of colour speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival, with historian Rebecca Rideal pulling out just four days before it is due to begin today (26th June), in protest over the issue. Read more
As Hay Festival Segovia opens, Hay founding director Peter Florence talks about the festival's global appeal, and about literature as "the most dissenting art form."
As Kari Mutu, reporting for The EastAfrican writes - in a version reposted at allAFrica - The Storymoja Festival, an annual literary and arts celebration, has become a pan-African event. Read more
But this season, there is a chill in the literary atmosphere. Unsurprisingly, given that the publishing industry continues to face tough times and, for its practitioners and impresarios alike, an uncertain future, it all starts with money. For years now, a row has rumbled on about the fees paid to authors at literary festivals or, more precisely, the lack of them. Read more
A concerted campaign against writers being asked to work without payment is gathering pace on a number of fronts. We take the temperature of the current debate. Read more
Philip Pullman has resigned as patron of the Oxford literary festival, complaining that authors appearing at the event "are expected to work for nothing". Enough's enough - authors can't work for free. Read more
The UK's parochial reading habits are an embarrassment, according to the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Nick Barley has introduced his sixth and most globally ambitious programme, which includes authors from North and South Korea, as well as first minister Nicola Sturgeon interviewing her favourite Scottish crime writer, Val McDermid. Read more
Earlier this month, saw the second session of Jaipur BookMark, the professional publishing platform which runs in parallel to the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival. The event, according to its press office, unveiled several intriguing facts, including the news that the estimated value of the industry in India is some $20 billion. Read more
‘I was very aware that because the manuscript has my name on it, people would just publish it, however bad it was, and I wanted honest feedback. I wanted to know that someone believed in the book and I truly enjoyed getting unvarnished feedback through my agent. There was one editor who did not like Strike having a famous father and made that point.
'My theatre background has probably helped me be a braver writer and maybe more rigorous, too: the theatre can sustain bold and abstract ideas, but not slow or sloppy storytelling'
Theatre producer Ellie Keel's debut novel, dark academia thriller The Four was published on 11 April by HQ.
In April of this year, Timothy Garton Ash collected his reward money for winning the prestigious 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize.
Today, in Kyiv, the Oxford University professor presented what he bought with it - a new set of reconnaissance drones for immediate use in the war against Russia.
Acclaimed for her accounts of the darkness and desire found in everyday life, ‘the Canadian Chekhov' has died, having suffered from dementia for more than a decade
Shimmr AI, an artificial intelligence start-up that aims to help publishers promote more of their list, has recruited a host of high-profile advisers from across the books industry, signalling the firm's plans to "deploy globally".
As Little, Brown's SFF imprint Orbit celebrates its 50th anniversary, publisher Anna Jackson reflects on its current record-breaking run and on building the brands of the future.