Mslexia, Summer 2009 If Ros Ramsay had preferred haircuts to a good read, a host of writers would have been robbed of certain income. Ramsay is one of the best-known literary scouts in London, matchmaking overseas publishers and UK film producers with books that will work in their markets. The
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The Independent on Sunday 25th January 2009 Over the past three years, Jill Dawson has been involved with another man. The Fens-based author candidly admits her feelings were so intense that she once signed her name “Rupert” instead of “Ruby”, the nickname used by her family. Rupert is Rupert Brooke,
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Mslexia Summer issue If you want Maria Rejt, Macmillan and Picador publishing director and one of the most respected editors in London, to notice your manuscript it is simple: create a unique outsider’s voice and characters that move her. Not as easy as it sounds, but that formula is what
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The Independent on Sunday 19th October 2008 A year ago the Chinese journalist and historian Xinran returned to China. She was there to research her latest oral history, China Witness, a collection of interviews given by grandparents and great-grandparents. She took the opportunity to visit her mother, from whom she
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After each previous arrest he had been tortured. He had also been threatened before release. The authorities had left no room for doubt: if he did not keep his mouth shut, worse would happen. But Zargana is not a man to keep his mouth shut, and had continued to ignore the threats and took his life in his hands defying bans on performing in public and talking to foreign journalists. He became the ‘loudspeaker’ of the people, articulating the anger and impatience of his compatriots eager for an end to the years of brutal oppression
The Independent on Sunday 9th March 2008 “I am always drawn to the strange and the odd and the unusual – people on the outside looking in. I will never write a book about somebody having an affair with their next-door neighbour,” declares Clare Morrall. As soon as the words
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The Independent on Sunday 24th February 2008 Stella Duffy answers the door of her south London terrace covered in flour. “I’ve been baking biscuits for you,” she smiles as she heads down the narrow hallway. I scurry after her into an airy kitchen filled with the scent of spices. Cooking
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The Independent on Sunday 10th February 2008 When Julie Myerson was 12, she would escape her parents’ collapsing marriage for the wild woods near home, with her two sisters in tow. Armed with paste sandwiches and bottles of pop, they would get lost in imaginative adventures designed to obliterate the
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‘It is interesting. The more successful I am, the more self-critical I am able to be publicly, because for years it felt like, “Shit, if I say I am crap, then there is no one who will say I am good, so I am going to have to say I am good otherwise no one else will say so.”’ She lets out a short laugh. ‘Now I can look back and say I made this mistake or that mistake and I am completely fine about being honest about that.’
“You can’t have the luxury of a Daily Mail mentality when you have met those kids and talked to them and seen what their lives are like,” he adds. “If you get a Rottweiler and keep beating it, then one day it is going to go wild. It is not rocket science.”
