20 May 2022
Alice Oseman's ‘Heartstopper’ Renewed for Two More Seasons at Netflix
Heartstopper fans, rejoice: Nick and Charlie will be back for a second and third season of the hit Netflix show based on the graphic novels, and Alice Oseman will return as writer and creator.
Heartstopper has been a critical and audience hit since launching on the platform on April 22, reaching Netflix’s Top Ten list in 54 countries. Sales of Alice Oseman's works have also increased exponentially since the premiere of the adaptation on Netflix, propelling the first volume in the original graphic novel series to number one on the official UK Children's bestseller charts and volumes two, three and four into the top ten as well, and Heartstopper Vol 1 is also sitting at number eight on the New York Times bestseller list this week.
That’s also been clear on social media, where the series flew to the top of Variety’s Trending TV chart in the week of its release with 1.05 million engagements on Twitter. Over the last four weeks it has remained at the top of the chart. The hashtag #Heartstopper has also amassed over 4.3B views on TikTok.
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18 May 2022
Announcing the DRF David Miller Internship Programme for 2022 in partnership with Creative Access
The DRF David Miller Bursary, currently awarded to a developing rights professional already working in the business, is to be refocused on creating entry pathways for people from groups under-represented in the sector, in partnership with Creative Access, a leading social enterprise specialised in diversity, equity and inclusion.
The biennial award will be renamed the DRF David Miller Internship Programme and with its educational brief will support two paid internships over a 6-week period.
The programme will offer an entry level introduction to rights and agenting in publishing companies and literary agencies, providing a full understanding of the role of rights professionals within the wider industry. This will be achieved through first-hand experience and intensive training, with the specific aim of providing a significant steppingstone to the successful candidates in their search for future employment. Their educational schedule will include involvement with The Frankfurt Book Fair in October, the key yearly rights event. The two interns will be given mentoring and guidance throughout their placements.
Payment will be made in two stages, based on th...
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18 May 2022
Kojo Karam and Audrey Magee shortlisted for Orwell Prize 2022
The Orwell Prize finalists have been unveiled and titles by Kojo Karam and Audrey Magee have been shortlisted for the two book prizes. For the Political Writing Prize, Kojo Karam is selected for his work on Uncommon Wealth (John Murray), which shines a light on Britain's cynical self-interest in the aftermath of decolonisation and the hitherto neglected financial scandals that allowed the nation's establishment to profit from the poverty of their former dependencies. For the Political Fiction Prize, Audrey Magee is shortlisted for her novel The Colony (Faber), which is about two men who arrive on a remote island attempting to capture its essence but the islanders themselves have their own views on the visitors' actions.
Each prize is worth £3,000 and will be presented to the winner at a ceremony closing the Orwell Festival of Political Writing on 14th July. The finalists will all be invited to take part in the festival, taking place from 22nd June to 14th July.
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16 May 2022
Kazuo Ishiguro, Hannah Gold and Ross Montgomery shortlisted for Indie Book Awards 2022
Titles by Kazuo Ishiguro, Hannah Gold and Ross Montgomery have been shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2022, which recognise the best paperbacks for summer as part of Independent Bookshop Week. Kazuo Ishiguro is shortlisted in the fiction category for his Booker-longlisted novel Klara and the Sun (Faber), which explores the implications of AI for human relationships and the question of what it means to love. In children’s, Hannah Gold's Waterstones Children's Book Prize and Blue Peter Award-winning The Last Bear, illustrated by Levi Pinfold (HarperCollins Children’s Books), is nominated alongside Ross Montgomery's heart-stopping adventure and entrancing story of faeries, changelings, The Chime Seekers (Walker).
Four winners will be announced on Friday 24th June, the penultimate day of Independent Bookshop Week, which runs from the 18th to 25th June. The winners will be announced live on the Mark Forrest show, which airs from 10am on Scala Radio, and is the media partner of the awards.
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16 May 2022
Abir Mukherjee & Rahul Raina shortlisted for CWA Daggers 2022
Abir Mukherjee and Rahul Raina are among those shortlisted for the 2022 Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger awards. For the Gold Dagger, which is awarded for the crime novel of the year, Abir Mukherjee is shortlisted for The Shadows of Men (Harvill Secker), the fifth instalment in his bestselling Wyndham and Banerjee series following the killing of a Hindu theologian in Calcutta which sets the city ablaze with religious and political conflict. For the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, which is awarded for the best crime novel by a first-time author, Rahul Raina is shortlisted for How to Kidnap the Rich (Little, Brown), a thought-provoking satirical thriller about two wealthy young kidnap victims in Delhi who easily turn the tables on their captors and decide to get into the game themselves.
The Dagger awards ceremony will be held at the Leonardo City hotel in London on 29th June, coinciding with National Crime Reading Month, which takes place throughout June. Tickets are available now from the CWA.
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11 May 2022
'Thoroughly addictive': BBC's critically acclaimed 'Life After Life' adaptation
The adaption of Kate Atkinson's award-winning and bestselling novel Life After Life has been critically acclaimed, with viewers full of praise for the BBC miniseries. The seven day consolidated figure for the first episode of Life After Life is currently sitting at 1.4 million viewers across BBC Two and BBC iPlayer, and episode two received 40,000 views overnight. Critics have said the adaptation is "thoroughly addictive" (The Guardian) and "gorgeously realised and entirely faithful" (The Telegraph).
Life After Life follows the story of Ursula, a character born in 1910, who dies and is reborn in a continuous loop, returning with nothing except a strange sense of déjà vu and some inexplicable self-protective instincts. Last Night in Soho star Thomasin McKenzie leads the cast in the role of Ursula, while Fleabag's Sian Clifford stars as Ursula's mother Sylvie, and Mare of Easttown's James McArdle plays Ursula's father Hugh. Other members of the stellar line-up include Jessica Brown Findlay (Harlots, Brave New World) and Jessica Hynes (Years and Years).
All episodes are available now on BBC iPlayer.
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06 May 2022
Sales of Alice Oseman's work surge in wake of hit Netflix series 'Heartstopper'
Sales of all Alice Oseman's works have increased exponentially since the premiere of Heartstopper on Netflix, propelling the first volume in the original graphic novel series to number one on the official UK Children's bestseller charts and volumes two, three and four into the top ten as well. Nick and Charlie: A Heartstopper Novella is number one across all audiobooks in the UK, and Alice Oseman currently holds seven of the top ten places in this week’s official UK Children's bestseller chart, and twelve of the top fifty (including Radio Silence, the Heartstopper Colouring Book, This Winter, Solitaire and more). Alice is also sitting at number six in the New York Times bestseller list this week with Loveless, and number eight on the graphic novel list with Heartstopper Volume 1.
With over 23.94 million hours watched, Heartstopper ranks number five on Netflix's Official Top 10 list of the most-watched TV shows in the English language for the week between April 25 and May 1. The Heartstopper hashtag on TikTok has 2.8 billion views, and the total number of Instagram followers for Alice, Kit Connor (Nic...
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06 May 2022
Tim Moore shortlisted for Sports Book Awards 2022
Tim Moore's Vuelta Skelter: Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain (Vintage) has been shortlisted for Cycling Book of the Year at the Sports Book Awards for 2022, held in association with the Sunday Times. The book is the culmination of a trilogy that has seen Tim Moore riding the routes of cycling’s Grand Tours, in France, Italy and Spain – this time in the midst of a global pandemic. As ever, there is much comedy and misadventure, but here there is a bigger story too, that of Julián Berrendero, who spent 18 months in Franco’s concentration camps before winning the 1941 race.
Now in their 20th year, the annual awards highlight the most outstanding sports books of the previous calendar year. A ceremony will take place at the Kia Oval, London, on 26th May, presented by the awards host and ITV’s chief sport presenter Mark Pougatch. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the awards, a Best Sports Book of the 21st Century prize will be presented to a previous winner.
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05 May 2022
Society of Authors unveils shortlists including Catherine Menon and Claire-Louise Bennett
The Society of Authors (SoA) has announced shortlists for the ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, the Betty Trask Prize and Awards, the Paul Torday Memorial Prize, the Queen’s Knickers Award, the McKitterick Prize and – in its first year – the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Catherine Menon's debut novel Fragile Monsters (Viking), a gripping story exploring the relationship between two women – a grandmother, Mary and her granddaughter, Durga - is shortlisted for the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize awarded for a novel focusing on the experience of travel away from home. Claire-Louise Bennett's Checkout 19 (Jonathan Cape), which is a tale of art, freedom and circumstance that follows a woman picking apart the narrative of her own life, is shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize awarded for a first novel by a writer over 40.
The SoA will announce the winners of each prize on 1 June 2022 at an in-venue ceremony at Southwark Cathedral, which will also be livestreamed.
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03 May 2022
'Night As It Falls' and 'Occupation' longlisted for Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize 2022
The Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize longlist has been announced, highlighting the best book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation and to recognise its cultural importance.
Longlisted this year is Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Night As It Falls by Jakuta Alikavazovic (Faber & Faber), a deeply contemporary and mesmerising novel about love, destruction, silences and the traces we leave behind, and the English language debut for the French writer; and Daniel Hahn's translation of Occupation by Julian Fuks (Charco Press), which is an autobiographical tale of political exile and the shameful chapter that continues to haunt the nation.
The shortlist will be announced in May 2022. The prize of £2000 will be awarded at Oxford Translation Day on 11 June 2022, at St Anne’s College.
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28 April 2022
Femi Fadugba shortlisted for Branford Boase Award 2022
Femi Fadugba has been shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2022, in a year that saw a record number of submissions, producing an eight-strong shortlist, the longest since the award was founded. He is shortlisted for his debut novel, The Upper World (Penguin), a dual narrative YA sci-fi thriller following the story of a teenage boy, Esso, who can see glimpses of the future, and of a fostered girl, Rhia, fifteen years in the future, who is desperately seeking for answers about the past when her path crosses with Esso's.
Set up in memory of award-winning author Henrietta Branford and her editor Wendy Boase, one of the founders of Walker Books, the Branford Boase Award is given annually to the author of an outstanding début novel for children. Uniquely the Branford Boase Award also honours the editors of the winning title, which includes Emma Jones, Stephanie Stein and Asmaa Isse for their work on The Upper World. Judges said: 'strong characters and the science element was cleverly woven in’; ‘it flips the traditional urban narrative in a really interesting way’; ‘the teen voice is spot on’; ‘the timeline is very well-controlled’; ‘I c...
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24 April 2022
CWA Dagger longlists revealed featuring Abir Mukherjee, Denise Mina, Eliot Higgins, Rahul Raina & Sarah Sultoon
The 2022 Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Dagger awards longlists have been revealed with Eliot Higgins, Abir Mukherjee, Denise Mina, Rahul Raina and Sarah Sultoon among the authors chosen. For the Gold Dagger, which is awarded for the crime novel of the year, Abir Mukherjee is longlisted for The Shadows of Men (Harvill Secker); for the ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction, which is awarded for the best non-fiction book on a crime-related theme, Eliot Higgins is longlisted for We Are Bellingcat (Bloomsbury); for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, which is awarded for blockbuster thrillers of the year, Denise Mina is longlisted for Rizzio (Berlinn); and for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger, which is awarded for the best crime novel by a first-time author, Rahul Raina is longlisted for How to Kidnap the Rich (Little, Brown) and Sarah Sultoon for The Source (Orenda Books).
Nominated by publishers and judged by industry professionals the Dagger Awards represent the best crime writing in the industry. The Crime Writers’ Association was founded in 1953 by John Creasey; its aim to support, promote and celebrate crime writers of both fictio...
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21 April 2022
Clare Jackson, Malcolm Gaskill and Alex von Tunzelman shortlisted for Wolfson History Prize 2022
The Wolfson History Prize shortlist for 2022 has been unveiled, featuring Malcolm Gaskill, Clare Jackson and Alex von Tunzelman among the six authors appearing on the list. The shortlist includes Malcolm Gaskill for The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World (Allen Lane), Clare Jackson for Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 (Allen Lane), and Alex von Tunzelman for Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History (Headline).
The prize is awarded by the Wolfson Foundation, an independent charity that awards grants in the fields of science, health, heritage, humanities and the arts. This year, to mark the 50th anniversary of the prize, the winner will receive £50,000. Each of the shortlisted authors gets £5,000.
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12 April 2022
Colm Tóibín and James Robertson shortlisted for Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022
Colm Tóibín and James Robertson have been shortlisted for the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, which celebrates outstanding historical novels published in the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth. Four novels are now in contention for the £25,000 prize, with settings spanning from the 8th century BC up to the 1960s, and from all four nations of the United Kingdom to Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the West Indies and the Punjab.
Colm Tóibín is shortlisted for his Rathbones Folio Prize-winning novel, The Magician (Viking), a fictionalised biography exploring the life and times of Thomas Mann, an exiled German Nobel winner; and James Robertson for News of the Dead (Hamish Hamilton), a novel revolving around a legend of a miracle-performing hermit and set in the rugged mountains of Scotland in three different time periods. Judges described Colm Tóibín's novel as "courageous" and "lyrical," and said "James Robertson is such a master at evoking landscape that we can hear the wind in the heather and smell the smoke of the peat fires."
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07 April 2022
Olga Tokarczuk shortlisted for International Booker Prize 2022
Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk's epic novel The Books of Jacob (Fitzcarraldo Editions), which has been called her “magnum opus”, and took Jennifer Croft seven years to translate, is among six novels shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022. The book follows the story of charismatic Jewish eighteenth-century mystic Jacob Frank and an Eastern Europe swept by new ideas. The judges said the book "weaves an epic tapestry from the bizarre, mundane and utterly unpredictable sweep of history as it is created moment by moment, crammed with a staggering cast of characters, places and historical events." They praised Jennifer Croft’s "lithe, elegant translation [for conveying] the novel’s delicate irony and its ethereal beauty." Olga Tokarczuk won the award in 2018 for her novel Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft. In the same year, Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature, for what the Nobel Prize described as "a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."
The International Booker is award each year to a single fiction book – either a novel or...
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07 April 2022
Keith Ridgway shortlisted for James Tait Black Prize 2022
Keith Ridgway has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction 2022, which includes an absorbing blend of books offering fresh takes on themes such as the intricacies of relationships, cultural identity and journeys of self-discovery. In A Shock (Picador), a clutch of more or less loosely connected characters appear, disappear and reappear. They are all of them on the fringes of London life, often clinging on – to sanity or solvency or a story – by their fingertips.
The awards – presented by the University since 1919 – are the only major British book prizes judged by literature scholars and students. Presented by the University of Edinburgh since 1919, they are the only major British book prizes judged by literature scholars and students.
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07 April 2022
Stephanie Sy-Quia longlisted for RSL Ondaatje Prize 2022
The longlist for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2022 has been revealed, and featured is Stephanie Sy-Quia's Amnion (Granta). Amnion is a contemporary lyric epic, journeying from the Philippines to Libya, through France, Spain, and the UK. This debut collection of poems questions keenly and urgently the roots of migration and colonialism, charting what it means to grow up in a family divided by geography, history and language.
First awarded in 2004, the premise and broad remit of the prize creates unique lists of outstanding works and authors that you would not usually find sitting side by side. Previous recipients of the prize have included RCW authors Aida Edemariam and Hisham Matar, and the 2022 RSL Ondaatje Prize Shortlist will be announced on Wednesday 20 April and the winner will be announced on 4 May at Two Temple Place.
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07 April 2022
Maddie Mortimer longlisted for Desmond Elliott Prize 2022
Maddie Mortimer has been longlisted for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2022, awarded to the most outstanding novel of the past 12 months. She is longlisted for her debut novel of trauma and buried secrets, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador), which is an audacious tour de force that is both heartwrenchingly moving and darkly funny, and centers on Lia and the shapeshifting malady that enters her body at the close of her life.
Peggy Hughes, executive director at the National Centre for Writing, which runs the award, said: "We’re delighted to announce a longlist that explores one of our most fundamental social needs, love, and the desire to take control of our own narratives, with many having themes of personal growth too. We’re looking forward to hearing Derek, Symeon and Lyndsey’s opinions on these captivating and thought-provoking debuts."
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05 April 2022
Olga Tokarczuk among The O. Henry Prize Winners: The Best Short Stories of 2022
Olga Tokarczuk has been awarded the 2022 O. Henry Prize for her short story “Seams,” which is translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft and is published in Freeman's. The O. Henry Prizes are the oldest major prize for short fiction in America and seek to provide a dazzling platform for modern short story writers at all points in their careers. This year works in translation have been considered for the second time and the prize have invited Valeria Luiselli as a guest editor. The twenty winners’ stories are collected and published annually by Anchor Books.
The subjects of this year’s twenty winning stories are predictably varied, but many touch on the pandemic, love and loss, though there is also humor and their appeal is universally human. The 2021 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award winner ’Pemi Aguda is also among this year's O Henry Prize winners for her short story “Breastmilk,” published in One Story.
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04 April 2022
Zadie Smith wins Bodley Medal, PEN/Audible Literary Service Award and Critics Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright 2022
Zadie Smith has received the Bodley Medal from Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden – awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds in which the Bodleian is active including literature, culture, science and communication. Previous recipients of the Bodley Medal include Peter Carey (2012), Hilary Mantel (2013), Nicholas Hytner (2014), Ian McEwan (2015), Professor Mary Beard (2016), William Boyd (2017), Claire Tomalin (2018) and Kazuo Ishiguro (2019). Zadie Smith said, "I am a novelist. Curiosity about consciousness is my practice."
Author Zadie Smith is also this year's winner of the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, an honor previously given to Toni Morrison, Stephen Sondheim and Margaret Atwood among others. The PEN literary award is presented to “an important writer whose work has drawn a wide audience and who helps us understand the human condition in original and powerful ways.”
At the Critics Circle Theatre Awards 2022, Zadie Smith and Igor Memic were joint winners of the Most Promising Playwright award. Although famed as a best-selling novelist, Smith counted as a “newcomer” for the Critics’ Circle because The Wife of Willesde...
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