Novelists

Lucas Kavner

Major Literary Prize Loses Its Main Sponsor

HuffingtonPost.com | Lucas Kavner | Posted 05.22.2012

Read More: Book Prizes, Orange, Fiction, Tigers Wife, Novelists, Orange Prize, Bel Canto, Fiction Prizes, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Culture News

One of the longest running cultural partnerships in the U.K. broke up for good Tuesday, threatening a major suporter of female novelists worldwide if ...

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Androgynous Pen Names

A.J. Walkley | Posted 04.10.2012

Read More: Women, Female Authors, Writers, Women Writers, Pen Names, Writing, Books, Novels, Novelists, Nom De Plume, Pseudonyms, Books News
A.J. Walkley

Women writers have used initials and male pen names for centuries to cover up their gender, knowing that for some readers (namely male), simply seeing a female's name on the cover of a book would dissuade them.

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Let's Hear it for the Self-Published Author

Warren Adler | Posted 04.06.2012

Read More: Book News, Warren Adler, Publishing, Writers, Writing, Fiction, Self-Publishing, Novelists, Author, Books News
Warren Adler

"Self-publishing" is now a reasonably respectable process that allows anyone who writes a book to be digitally "shelved" alongside authors published by traditional routes.

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Stuck Writers, Second Novels, and Empty Boats

Andromeda Romano-Lax | Posted 05.22.2012

Read More: Second Novels, Michael Chabon, Lionel Shriver, Writer's Block, Mark Salzman, Novelists, Writing a Novel, Unfinished Novel, Books News
Andromeda Romano-Lax

Between my debut and this book, an entirely different novel and a few other partial manuscripts had languished: unfinished, unloved. No wonder I've always been drawn to stories of other novelists with unpublished or simply abandoned novels.

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The Fiction That Fiction Is Fiction Is Fiction

Joan Marans Dim | Posted 05.07.2012

Read More: Fiction Writing, Kathryn Stockett, Philip Roth, Novel Writing, Kathryn Stockett the Help, Abilene Cooper, Novelists, Kathryn Stockett Lawsuit, Fiction, Books News
Joan Marans Dim

Must a novelist, whose task often is to mine the jumble of life's experiences, disguise plot and characters so that no one is offended? My answer is an emphatic "no."

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Not Many Novels From Some Novelists

Dave Astor | Posted 05.02.2012

Read More: Short Stories, Religion, Politics, Europe, Gilead, Novels, Nonfiction, Marilynne Robinson, Death, Productivity, Novelists, Books News
Dave Astor

There are various reasons why some authors have sparsely populated canons. Some die young or relatively young. Some deal with ill health. Some feel they've said all they want to say in their minimal output.

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Cormac McCarthy And 11 Other Novelists Who Wrote For The Movies

The Huffington Post | Amy Lee | Posted 01.20.2012

Read More: The Road, Screenplays, Authors and Hollywood, No Country for Old Men, Novelists, Cormac Mccarthy Movie, Hollywood Writers, Cormac Mccarthy the Counselor, Cormac McCarthy, Slidepollajax, All the Pretty Horses, Screenwriting, The Counselor Cormac Mccarthy, Culture News

Author Cormac McCarthy's novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, routinely hit the top of the bestseller lists and have been made into Academy Award-winni...

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We The Animals: Novel Of The Year?

Richard B. Woodward | Posted 02.07.2012

Read More: Iowa, Puerto Rico, Memoirs, Best Books, Books, Literary Fiction, Novels, Novelists, Gay, We the Animals, Books News
Richard B. Woodward

Novels and memoirs about the damages of childhood beg to become tear-jerking orgies. What kept me reading was Torres' dry-eyed control over his material. Edited with obsessive care, he hasn't allowed that to happen.

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Book Review: Chad Harbach's Sublime Achievement With The Art of Fielding

Steve Kettmann | Posted 12.07.2011

Read More: Great Novels, Novels, Novelists, Baseball, American Novelists, Art of Fielding Review, Chad Harbach Art of Fielding, The Art of Fielding, Baseball Novels, Baseball Writers, Books News
Steve Kettmann

There are major risks to writing a baseball novel, one, you can easily lose the baseball-loving reader with one false note, and two, you can lose everyone else if the balance between "baseball" and "novel" tips too far toward baseball.

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Novelists and the College Application Essay

Elizabeth Benedict | Posted 11.22.2011

Read More: College Application Essay, Fiction Writing, Don't Sweat the Essay, Common Application, College Application Essay Tips, College Essay, Common Application Essay, Novelists, College News
Elizabeth Benedict

Yes, it's true that fiction writers "make things up," but there are many other elements essential to writing fiction that apply just as certainly to college application essays.

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Writer Fakes Kidnapping To Promote New Book

The News & Advance | Posted 08.28.2011

Read More: Literary Agent, Novelists, Mark Davis, Rejection, Writer Fakes Kidnapping, Writers, End of the Line, Books News

For anyone hoping to become a successful novelist these days, writing the novel is only the beginning. Getting it published just a step in the right d...

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Checking Out

Laura Dave | Posted 08.09.2011

Read More: Summer Reading, Travel Tips, Novel Writing, Beach Reading, Novelists, Food, Travel, Book Clubs, Novel, Travel News
Laura Dave

One of my favorite quotes about traveling is by Susan Sontag. Sontag said, "I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list."

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A Mother Like No Other

Lev Raphael | Posted 07.07.2011

Read More: Novels, Novelists, Motherhood, Memoir, Fashion Designers, Louis Gould, Books News, Books, Daughters, Mother's Day 2011, High Fashion, Books News
Lev Raphael

If you think your mother is tough, now's the time to read Mommy Dressing. Louis Gould's mother was a famous fashion designer. "Don't perspire in this dress," she warned. "I never perspire. Why must you?"

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English Teacher's Second Career As Romance Novelist Irks Parents

Posted 06.29.2011

Read More: Video, Poll, Romance Novels, Adult Novels, Second Job, Novelists, Teacher, Erotic Books, Teacher Quality, Pennsylvania, Judy Mays, Adult Books, Judy Buranich, Teachers, Erotic Novel, Education News

When parents discovered that an English teacher at Midd West High School had a second job as a novelist, they weren't impressed. What's causing cr...

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Con Games: How Charles Dickens Saved My Life

Michael Conniff | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Novels, Charles Dickens, Novelists, Cormac McCarthy, Reading, Fiction, Denver News
Michael Conniff

David Copperfield brought me back to life as a lover of the made-up story. The moment I had finished page 734 I went to the list of classic novels on the facing page to choose my next flight.

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Is Oprah Sexist? Should Authors Say Less and Write More?

Lev Raphael | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Commercial-Fiction-vs-Literary-Fiction, Authors, Book News, Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Weiner, Jodi Picoult, Jonathan Franzen, Books, Fiction, Novels, Novelists, New York Times, Oprah's Book Club, Sexism, Books News
Lev Raphael

So Oprah picked Jonathan Franzen's new novel for her Book Club, despite the hullabaloo about the amount of "sexist" press coverage his new novel was getting. Does that make Oprah sexist?

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The Novelist Wars?

Matthew Pearl | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Novelists, Jonathan Franzen, Literary Fiction, Genre Fiction, Books News
Matthew Pearl

Most of us do not think we can compose a symphony or direct a film, but many of us feel there is a novel inside of us somewhere.

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Why Do Novelists Hate Being Interviewed?

Salon.com | CHRISTY LEMIRE | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Roberto Bolano, Don Delillo, Novelists, Authors, Author Interviews, JM Coetzee, Books, Books News

"I Don't Want to Talk About It." That was on the card Don DeLillo handed me in Athens after I crossed seven time zones to interview him back in 1979. ...

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Reading ... the Old Fashioned Way

Ivy Pochoda | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Novels, Novelists, Kindle, Bookstores, Reading, Books News
Ivy Pochoda

We have grown distant from our words. Our books are not physical objects, but rather bits and bytes on a screen. Reading aloud makes words tangible and gives them a presence.

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Postcards From the Fun-Employed, Part Deux

Paula Froelich | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Page Six, Marriage, The Met, Simon & Schuster, Children, Atria, Writing, Africa, Novels, Novelists, George Clooney, Paula Froelich, Books News
Paula Froelich

I started writing a novel called "Female Kryptonite." It was about Jim - a never married, successful (in business and with the ladies), 40-something who starts to realize he's lonely.

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Guardian's First Book Award Shortlist Announced

The Guardian | Mark Brown | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Short Stories, The Guardian, First Books, Novelists, Book Awards, Guardian First Book Award, Book Prizes, Books, First Book Award, Literature Awards, New Authors, Literary Prizes, Books News

Powerful fictional storytelling dominates the shortlist of this year's Guardian first book award, announced today, which includes works that range fro...

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How Abraham Lincoln's "Hot Letters" Can Keep You From Going All Alice Hoffman

David Quigg | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Publishing, Twitter, Civil War, Boston Globe, Doris Kearns Goodwin, George Meade, Team of Rivals, Roberta Silman, Writing, Books, Abraham Lincoln, E-Mail, Alice Hoffman, Novelists, Critics, Anger Management, Media News
David Quigg

We all have our limits. Abraham Lincoln's limit is that he left behind no wise counsel for the man who finds himself garmentless at 30,000 feet. But he did leave something for the Twitterers.

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Iran: Reading Tehran With Lolita (Time to Publish Iranian Writers)

Jeff Biggers | Posted 05.25.2011

Read More: Iran, George W. Bush and Iran, Writers, Poets, Novelists, Diplomacy, PEN American Center, Schools, Iranian Culture, Iranian Literature, Politics News
Jeff Biggers

While Azar Nafisi's bestselling Reading Lolita in Tehran, chronicled her efforts to teach forbidden Western literature, most Americans would be hard pressed to recall a single novel from Nafisi's native country.

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