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Bitesize news
A summary of news stories from
the literary world making world
headlines broken down into
easy to digest chunks.
Comma
Press's tale of four zines
First Peek at Clinton's Memoirs
First-time author wins Samuel Johnson
prize
Hitchhiker Resurrected
Dublin celebrates Bloomsday centenary
Wordsworth childhood home re-opens
Comma Press's tale of four zines
By Nathan
Midgley
The Manchester-based
independent Comma Press has launched a new short story
campaign, making it one of a growing group of organisations
that are actively promoting the beleaguered form.
Building on the region-specific fiction that is its
staple, Comma has produced four promotional ‘zines’
that explore Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester.
The series, entitled Tales of the Cities, showcases
short fiction by writers like Simon Armitage, Sophie
Hannah and Sean O’Brien alongside work by local
artists.
Comma’s founder and co-editor Ra Page says the
zine format is “an attempt to resuscitate the
original spirit in which short stories were read –
in periodicals and magazines.”
Comma has recently been awarded two further years funding
from Arts Council England, and looks like becoming the
longest-running fiction press in Manchester for over
50 years.
Tales of the Cities zines will initially be distributed
free on local transport and in listings magazines, thereafter
retailing at £2 each.
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First
Peek at Clinton's Memoirs
by Rowan
Clarke
The race was on with the world's media to get first
glimpses of ex US President Bill Clinton's memoirs My
Life .
The hotly anticipated memoirs, published on Tuesday
22nd June, set pre-order records on Amazon from readers
avidly awaiting the 957-page book of recollections from
Clinton's scandal-tainted political life.
Although few clues were given as to the content of
the book before its release, Time Warner's AOl.com started
whetting audiences appetites with audio clips of Clinton
reading excerpts from My Life, while broadcasters,
press and online outlets speculated about its content
and clamoured for interviews.
Bill Clinton will be touring the US and then the UK
making numerous TV appearances, interviews and book
signings. My Life is published by Random House
and is on sale in the UK for £25.
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First-time
author wins Samuel Johnson prize
By Sarah
Lewis
Anna Funder’s first book Stasiland: Stories
From Behind the Berlin Wall has won the £30,000
Samuel Johnson award for non-fiction, defeating the
likes of Bill Bryson and Pulitzer prize-winning Anne
Applebaum.
The book’s publisher Granta were thrilled to
beat bigger players like Penguin and HarperCollins.
The book is made up of stories from East Germany’s
secret police, and includes testimony from the man who
painted the line that became the Berlin Wall and the
woman accused of potentially sparking a conflict by
trying to cross the border.
The judges said the book contains ‘wonderful
flashes of humour, despite the sobering subject matter’
and that Funder unearths extraordinary tales from the
underbelly of the former East Germany.
The other shortlisted books included Aidan Hartley’s
The Zanzibar Chest: A Memoir of Love and War,
Tom Holland for Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy
of the Roman Republic and Jonathan Bate’s
biography of poet John Clare.
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Hitchhiker
Resurrected
by Rowan
Clarke
Douglas Adams, creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy, will be heard in a radio adaptation of
his famous books 3 years after his death.
Producers have used digital technology to used home
recordings of Adams as Agrajag made 18 months before
he died suddenly in 2001.
The satirical sci-fi story, which is now considered
something of a cult classic was first broadcasted in
1978.
Now the final three Hitchhiker books: Life, The Universe
and Everything; so Long and Thanks For All the Fish;
and Mostly Harmless will be aired for the first time
in 25 years.
The new Radio 4 series includes 5 of the original cast
and will be broadcast in 14 parts starting later this
year.
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Dublin celebrates
Bloomsday centenary
By Sarah
Lewis
More than 1,300 people gathered in Dublin on 16 June
to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, the
day on which James Joyce’s classic Ulysses is
set.
Fans of the novel travelled to Dublin from all over
the world to visit Joyce’s house, hear readings
from the book and visit Davy Byrne’s on Duke Street
– the pub where the book’s everyman hero
Leopold Bloom enjoys a glass of Burgundy and a gorgonzola
sandwich.
Bloomsday is an annual industry in its own right, and
plans for the centenary have been underway for some
time. According to Lisajane Duffy of the James Joyce
Centre, ‘some people have been in contact with
us about it for the last three years.’
Mirroring Bloom’s epic perambulation of Dublin
– the closest thing the novel has to a story –
the author’ s grand-nephew Philip Joyce walked
more than 160 miles over five days to attend the breakfast,
raising money for Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Some homages, though, demanded too much: revellers
who began by eating, as Bloom does, ‘the inner
organs of beasts and fowls,’ could not do so with
as much relish as their hero – mutton kidneys,
Helen Monaghan of the James Joyce Centre admitted, aren’t
a terribly popular breakfast.
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Wordsworth
childhood home re-opens
By Rowan
Clarke
Fans of the infamous poet will be able to gain a very
personal insight into Wordsworth early years with the
re-opening of his childhood home that inspired many
of his works including Guilt and Sorrow.
He was born in the 'little croft' in 1770 and lived
there until he was 9 years old just after his mother
Ann died. The National Trust have now painstakingly
restored the lime-washed Georgian townhouse in Cockermouth,
Cumbria to perfect detail - even employing actors to
act out the lives of its inhabitants
Read the Independent's
feature about Wordsworth's 'little croft.'
Find out more about the Wordsworth House from the National
Trust.
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