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Showing posts from March, 2007

[Interview] Ion Trewin, Man Booker Prize Administrator

Author of the 1998 internationally acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard , Kiran Desai is the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in six years. The award last went to a woman in 2000 when Margaret Atwood scooped the prize with The Blind Assassin . At 35, Desai is also the youngest woman ever to win the award. Desai's winning book, The Inheritance of Loss , is a radiant, funny and moving family saga that has been described by reviewers as, among other things, ‘the best, sweetest, most delightful novel’. The Inheritance of Loss won ahead of Kate Grenville's The Secret River , M.J. Hyland's Carry Me Down , Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men , Edward St. Aubyn's Mother's Milk and Sarah Waters' The Night Watch . This year judges selected 19 novels from 112 for the longlist. Of those 112 novels, 95 were submitted and 17 were called in by the judges. Man Booker Prize administrator, Ion Trewin spoke about the prize, the books that made it on

[Interview] Rebecca Goings

Rebecca Goings lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband Jim and their four children, two cats, a dog, and a lizard. She home-schools her children and finds it to be one of the most rewarding things she's ever done. She also writes mainstream and inspirational romances in many different genres , from historical to contemporary, and fantasy to paranormal . She has written more than 17 books, some of which have been published by Grace Publishing , Champagne Books , and Samhain Publishing . Since its release on October 1, her latest novel, The B.E.A.S.T. Within has made it to the best-seller list on Fictionwise. It is also the top-selling book for Champagne Books. Rebecca Goings spoke about her writing, the challenges she faces as a writer and how she deals with these. When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? When I was seven years old. I was in the first grade, and the second graders came in to read some stories for us, ones they had written themselves. Well, their

[Interview] Steve Dearden, literary activist

Steve Dearden is a literature activist, consultant, and writer. He coordinates the Writing Squad , a program for writers between the ages of 16 and 20 in Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, and Light Transports , a project commissioning and publishing writers in journey-sized chunks for free distribution on the transport network. He also works with a range of literature and cultural clients on project, business, and organisational development. He has written for radio and for magazines in the United Kingdom and Australia. One of his short stories has been translated into Swedish. Steve Dearden spoke about the work he is doing. You have been described as a "gamekeeper turned poacher." How and why is this so? It's a shorthand other people use and I don't recognize. I worked for the Arts Council for nine years, but it was a different beast in Yorkshire at the time. We were part of the profession, we got in there, got our hands dirty, intervened, collaborated, did strategic

[Interview] Kerala Goodkin

Kerala Goodkin holds a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University. In 2001, she co-founded the nonprofit Glimpse Foundation and currently serves as editor-in-chief. She has traveled extensively and lived in Bolivia for six months, where she worked as a reporter for The Bolivian Times . In addition to her work with The Glimpse Foundation, Kerala has been a contributing editor to National Geographic Traveller On Campus and currently serves as translator and public relations coordinator for the Committee of Immigrants in Action. She recently won first place in the Elixir Inaugural Fiction Contest (2004) for her first novel, How Things Break , which was subsequently published by Elixir Press in June of this year. Kerala Goodkin spoke about her work with The Glimpse Foundation, her own writing, and her plans for the future. What is The Glimpse Foundation? The mission of Glimpse is to foster cross-cultural understanding, particularly between the United States and the rest of the wor