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'm very reassuringly honest. It's a job as well as a calling. It's my living - I'm the chief breadwinner in my house. My husband is retired, he supported me through the two decades while I wasn't making enough to live on, and was doing all kinds of things to do with writing to survive - judging competitions, running workshops, appraising manuscripts.
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more
For the past five years or so, I've read books on my phone. The practice started innocently enough. I write book reviews from time to time, and so publishers sometimes send me upcoming titles that fall roughly within my interests. Read more
The Guardian calls Irish-Indian poet Nikita Gill "Britain's most-followed poet on social media"-she has 780,000 Instagram followers and 180,000 TikTok followers, and her Instapoetry has been reshared by the likes of Khloe Kardashian, Alanis Morissette, and Sam Smith-and she has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels in the U.K. But she is far less known on this side of the pond. Read more
Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years-four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There's I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids.
Simon & Schuster has acquired the largest Dutch publishing group Veen Bosch & Keuning, including all of its publishers in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as sister companies Thinium and Bookchoice.
The Publishers Association (PA) has criticised the government's response to a House of Lords report on AI, saying that it has failed to make "any tangible commitments to protect the creative industries against mass copyright infringement".
'I'm very reassuringly honest'
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more