Latest news

Caroline was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2015 birthday honours list for her campaigning for women's rights and representation. Caroline is a freelance journalist and feminist campaigner. She writes predominantly on feminism, and other social justice issues. She also runs her own popular blog, Week Woman, and has spoken at numerous events on the topic of feminism, women?s voices, and social media, including running a workshop on social media at the latest Women?s Aid conference. Her debut book Do It Like A Woman sheds light on the unrecognised stories of amazing women, who have been hidden from view by a public culture dominated by men. Criado-Perez shows that women are achieving success in a wide range of fields, all while battling the odds and expectations that are stacked against them. The book draws attention to the sportswomen, activists, game-changers, leaders and even the beer-drinkers who are re-defining what woman can do in the 21st century. Do It Like A Woman reinvents what it means to ?do it? while being female.

The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths, the sixth novel in the series featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway, has been selected from a longlist of 18 crime novels published by British and Irish authors over the last year, for the 2015 Award in partnership with T&R Theakston Ltd, WH Smith and Radio Times. The overall winner will be decided by the panel of judges, which this year comprises of: executive director of T&R Theakston Ltd. and title sponsor Simon Theakston; festival chair Ann Cleeves; Radio Times? TV editor Alison Graham; head of fiction at WH Smith, Sandra Bradley; and producer of the Radio 2 Book Club, Joe Haddow, as well as members of the public. The public vote opens on 1st July and closes on 13th July at the Theakstons website. www.theakstons.co.uk The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony hosted by broadcaster Mark Lawson on the opening night of the 13th annual Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate on 16th July. The winner will receive a ?3,000 cash prize, as well as a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by Theakstons Old Peculier. Previous winners of the award include Lee Child, Val McDermid, and Mark Billingham.

The winners of the Guild of Food Writers 2015 Awards were announced on Tuesday 9th June at a reception held in Opera Holland Park with The Gladwin Brothers picking up the Michael Smith Award for Work on British Food. The Awards, judged by Guild members, celebrate excellence in the field of food writing and broadcasting. The Awards ceremony was compered by Bill Buckley and the awards were presented by the Guild?s President Xanthe Clay. Divided into four sections, each focusing on a season, The 100 recipes in The Shed Cookbook encompass the Mouthfuls, Slow and Fast Cooking and Puds that feature on their menus. Including personal insights from each brother - Gregory's view from the farm, Richard's tips on food and wine matching and Oliver's step-by-step guide to the basics such as bread-making and preserving.

Elly Grififths has, once again, been short-listed for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. Unlike most other literary prizes, the Dagger in the Library is awarded not for an individual book but for an author?s entire body of work and is one of six highly prized CWA Dagger Awards awarded to crime writers since 1955. This year?s shortlist and winner will decided by a panel of judges including previous winner Sharon Bolton, CWA Director Lucy Santos and a panel of UK librarians. Nominations closed on Monday 14th April and the 2015 winner will be announced at the CWA Awards Dinner on the 30th June.

Last Wednesday, Xiaolu Guo joined supporters gathered at a literary protest and reading for silenced Chinese writers on the steps of the New York Public Library. Jonathan Franzen, Andrew Solomon, Paul Auster, Francine Prose, Ha Jin and others stood outside the main New York Public Library to demand that China free Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and professor Ilham Tohti from prison, stop restricting other writers and have the confidence to allow free speech. The authors took a group photo with the crowd holding placards spelling "free expression" in English and Chinese. Organizers said the photo will make its way into China via virtual private network services that let Internet users jump the Great Firewall. Protest organizer PEN American Center said this week's BookExpo America features a China delegation of hundreds of people "hand-picked by the Chinese government." At the expo, PEN volunteers handed out fliers entitled "Governments Make Bad Editors." China's publishing delegation, meanwhile, kept the mood firmly positive with such presentations as "Book Launch for The China Dream." On the convention floor, where China had purchased more than 20,000 square feet, featured books ranged from the sayings of Mao Zedong to "A Study of the Important Speeches Made By Secretary-General Xi Jinping." Chinese Embassy spokesman Zhu Haiquan has said the Chinese government protects its citizens' right of freedom to publish but those exercising that freedom must abide by Chinese law. The BookExpo, the publishing industry's annual national trade show, said China represents a significant market that's critical to the industry. "It's important for them to have a seat at the table and engage in a cultural and commercial exchange that could have a positive impact on the future of publishing both at home and across the globe," BookExpo event director Steve Rosato said this week. One American publisher who issues Chinese books for the American market acknowledged having conflicted feelings. Paul Harrington, vice president and associate publisher of CN Times Books, acknowledged that books his company was translating "went through whatever propaganda process is in place there" and that "if it made me too uncomfortable, I suppose I could quit."

As part of The Time Being series, Amber Lee Dodd?s The Love Songs of Foxes aired on BBC Radio Four. The Time Being provides a showcase for new voices, none of whom have been previously broadcast. Previous series have brought new talent to a wider audience and provided a stepping stone for writers who have since gone on to enjoy further success both on radio and in print, such as Joe Dunthorne and Tania Hershman. The fifteen minute story was read by Tracy Wiles and produced by Jeremy Osborne. You can listen again here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wny9j Amber Lee Dodd was a writer in residence for The Expansionists and a playwright for the young playwrights programme at Chichester Festival Theatre. Her plays have featured at the Edinburgh Fringe, New Theatre Royal and the Minerva Theatre. Her fiction is published internationally with Litro Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, The View From Here and many more. She is studying a MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University and her debut children?s novel We Are Giants comes out with Quercus in spring 2016.

Over the weekend it was announced that A Colder War, the second in the Thomas Kell trilogy by Charles Cumming, was awarded the CrimeFest eDunnit Award for the best crime fiction ebook first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format in the British Isles in 2014. He received a cash prize as well as a commemorative Bristol Blue Glass vase. The nominees were: ? Linwood Barclay for No Safe House (Orion Publishing Group) ? Lawrence Block for The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Orion Publishing Group) ? Charles Cumming for A Colder War (HarperCollins) ? Chris Ewan for Dark Tides (Faber & Faber) ? Greg Illes for Natchez Burning (HarperCollins) ? Thomas Mogford for Hollow Mountain (Bloomsbury) ? Thomas Sweterlitsch for Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Headline) ? Andrew Taylor for The Silent Boy (HarperCollins)

Tonight, at 6:30pm, Xiaolu Guo, the acclaimed Chinese novelist, will discuss the idea of immigration and transnationalism in her new fictional offering I Am China, alongside her 2007 book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. She will be joined by Huma Qureshi, whose book, In Spite of Oceans, looks at immigration from a creative non-fiction perspective. The event will be chaired by Independent literary editor, Arifa Akbar, and will take place at the Arts & Learning centre at Asia House as part of the Bagri Foundation Literature Festival 2015.

We are delighted to announce that The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt (Simon & Schuster) and Acts of Omission by Terry Stiastny (John Murray) have been selected to long list for the Authors? Club Best First Novel Award 2015.The full list of 12 books were selected from a record number of more than 60 submissions by a panel of Authors' Club members after intense and wide-ranging debate. They are, as follows: The Letter Bearer by Robert Allison (Granta) A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray (Hutchinson) The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton (Picador) Academy Street by Mary Costello (Canongate) The Spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson (Little, Brown) The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman (Weidenfeld) Ishmael?s Oranges by Claire Hajj (Oneworld) Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (Penguin) The Dynamite Room by Jason Hewitt (Simon & Schuster) The Restoration of Otto Laird by Nigel Packer (Sphere) In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman (Picador) Acts of Omission by Terry Stiastny (John Murray) The shortlist will be made public in May, and the shorted authors will read from their work at Foyles bookshop, 107 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0DT, on Wednesday 27 May. The winner will be announced ? and the ?2,500 prize awarded ? by this year?s guest adjudicator, the writer Susie Boyt, at a reception on Wednesday 17 June at the National Liberal Club in London. Jack Wolf won the prize last year, for his debut The Tale of Rawhead and Bloodybones

Two Janklow & Nesbit authors are on the prestigious longlist for the 2015 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. M.J. Arlidge's Eeny Meeny and The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths are joined by authors including Lee Child and Ian Rankin. Now in its eleventh year, the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award was created to celebrate the very best in British and Irish crime writing. The longlist is selected by an academy of crime writing authors, agents, editors, reviewers, members of the Crime Writing Festival Programming Committee and representatives from T&R Theakston Ltd and WHSmith. The overall winner will be decided by a panel of judges with the winner of the prize announced by Simon Theakston at an award ceremony hosted by Mark Lawson on 16th July on the opening night of the 13th annual Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. More information here: http://harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/crime/award/

Graphic novelist and artist, Henny Beaumont, is taking part in an event entitled, Graphic Brighton & Quick Strips as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. In association with Myriad Editions and the University of Brighton, and now in its second year, Graphic Brighton brings together graphic novelists and comics creators whose work gives voice to otherwise marginalised or under-represented groups. It kicks off this Friday evening with a panel on gay Manga at 7pm followed by Myriad event Quick Strips, at 8.30pm, in which twelve comics creators will have five minutes each to present their work. Saturday offers panels, talks and workshops by comics writers, artists, publishers and researchers. Friday evening is a free, ticketed event. Doors open at 6.30pm. Saturday costs ?10 or ?6 for concessions and starts at 9.30am. For more information and to book, click here.

Lucy and her father, Professor Stephen Hawking, were awarded the 2015 UNSW Medal for Science Communication, in an unforgettable ceremony at The Sydney Opera House, this weekend. Professor Hawking wowed audiences by beaming in from Cambridge via hologram technology thanks to a partnership with Cisco and UNSW's Big Questions Institute. Professor Crossley congratulated Lucy Hawking on being a great communicator of science who initiated the ?George? series of children?s books, co-written with her father, that have sold in territories all over the world. ?Educating and inspiring the next generation of scientists is one of the most important things we can do. Just as Lucy has been inspired by her father Stephen, I hope the books they have written together continue to inspire generations to come,? Professor Crossley said. Lucy Hawking said it was a very great honour to receive the UNSW medal and to share it with her father. ?We both passionately believe in the importance of communicating science to the widest audience possible and the youngest audience possible. This is a lovely piece of recognition of the work we have done.? The annual UNSW Medal for Science Communication was established in 2014 by Professor Crossley to honour individuals who have shared their knowledge and scientific insights with a broad audience ? informing, inspiring and engaging the public on scientific topics and issues.

It was announced this morning that Charles Cumming has been put forward for the CrimeFest eDunnit Award for the best crime fiction ebook first published in both hardcopy and in electronic format in the British Isles in 2014. The winning author receives a cash prize as well as a commemorative Bristol Blue Glass vase. The nominees are: ? Linwood Barclay for No Safe House (Orion Publishing Group) ? Lawrence Block for The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Orion Publishing Group) ? Charles Cumming for A Colder War (HarperCollins) ? Chris Ewan for Dark Tides (Faber & Faber) ? Greg Illes for Natchez Burning (HarperCollins) ? Thomas Mogford for Hollow Mountain (Bloomsbury) ? Thomas Sweterlitsch for Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Headline) ? Andrew Taylor for The Silent Boy (HarperCollins)

Check out this lovely piece about Diana Athill in the Guardian, today. Diana Athill published her previous memoir, a Costa award-winning, and bestselling, reflection on ageing and death, at the age of 90. Intending it to be her final book, she called it Somewhere Towards the End. But the end, it turns out, is still a way off, as Athill is currently writing a further volume of memoir, Alive, Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter, a collection of work that reflects on memories from her life which have risen to the surface as she approaches 100. It will be published by Granta next year, just in time for her 99th birthday!