Number 3 chiller - Text Publishing

Geoff Dyer and Chris Flynn at the Sydney Writers' Festival

2012-05-23T00:00:00Z

The Sydney Writers' Centre made the most of the fact that many fantastic authors were in town for the Writers' Festival and got a terrific series of interviews, now up on their blog.

Here’s a video of Geoff Dyer discussing writing, range and research:

And here’s Chris Flynn on his debut novel A Tiger in Eden and the writing process:

Cory Taylor is the regional winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize

2012-05-22T00:00:00Z

The regional winners of the Commonwealth Book Prize were announced today, and our very own Cory Taylor has won in the Pacific Region for Me and Mr Booker!

Margaret Busby, Chair of the Commonwealth Book Prize, said, ‘We were wonderfully spoilt for choice among some strong regional contenders on the shortlist, and although we could not take every favourite further, the books that triumphed are a reminder of what the best fiction can be: moving, entertaining, enlightening, exciting, engaging our thoughts and emotions, while creating an intimate connection with someone else’s imagination. Here are novels with memorable characters, unpredictable situations, a sense of humour, books that give insights into cultures and histories not our own, crafted by writers who care about language, and its ability to renew and enrich our view of the world.’

You can see the full list of winners here. The overall winner will be announced at Hay Festival in Wales on 8 June.

Congratulations, Cory!

We'd like to thank the Academy

2012-05-21T00:00:00Z

We had a great week last week, capped off by two wins at Friday night’s Australian Book Industry Awards.

Here’s Kate Grenville accepting her award for General Fiction Book of the Year for Sarah Thornhill.

And here’s publisher Michael Heyward accepting the award for Small Publisher of the Year.

You can read Michael’s op-ed piece on how to rekindle interest in the great Australian stories here. Stephen Romei, literary editor of the Australian, sums up the ABIA night here.

These wins came after the two prizes won at the APA Book Design Awards for Bernard Beckett’s August, and Jane Higgins' The Bridge’s honour award at the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.

Congrats to all the winners!

Friday Links

2012-05-18T00:00:00Z

‘Your’ vs ‘You’re’: baddest-ass rap battle ever? Probably not. Baddest-ass grammar lesson ever? Quite possibly.

Extremely silly photos of extremely serious writers. I want my bear suit back, Sontag. It was a loan!

This video on how to write a novel makes it look like a snap! I’m guessing that’s…deceptive?

Looks like we’ve found a new go-to insult in ‘Backpfeifengesicht’: 25 other words we need in English.

Set Middlemarch as the text, and other ways to kill your book club.

The birth of a book, told in infographic. The world needs more goat farms.

Famous literary roommates.

2012 APA Book Design Awards

2012-05-18T00:00:00Z

The 2012 APA Book Design Awards were announced last night, and we’re delighted to report that brilliant designers Chong and Susan Miller received two awards for the design of Bernard Beckett’s August!

August was judged to be the best YA cover (by Chong) and the best designed children’s book for 2012, and was described as ‘a fantastically clever and disconcerting design’. You can read more about the awards in today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

Congratulations, Chong and Susan!

Friday Links

2012-05-11T00:00:00Z

A visual representation of the (apparently) 10 most read (well, sold) books in the world.

If it takes five years work to become a skilled blacksmith, how many years of work intensified into nineteen hours a day, so that one year counts for five-how many years of such work, studying medium and form, art and artisanship, do you think a man, with native talent and something to say, required in order to reach a place in the world of letters where he received a thousand dollars cash iron money per week? I think maybe…I will be a blacksmith? Is that a thing?

Beautiful buildings made of books.

Depressed copywriter is depressed.

So maybe you’re saying, I don’t want to create a global phenomenon. I just want to write my little book about me and my little friends texting each other and such. And I’ll answer, Jane Austen already wrote that book, but okay. How to write the Great American Novel in 11 easy steps.

Remember those weird little booky sculptures that were turning up all over the place in Scotland? They’re baaaaaack! At…Ian Rankin’s house?

Friday links

2012-05-04T00:00:00Z

Raul Lemesoff’s book tank, a mobile work of art and advocacy for peace and literacy. (via NOTCOT.org)

Literary paint chips. Rebecca’s Smalls would look lovely in the boudoir.

The 10 most harmful novels for aspiring writers.

Some way-off and some spookily prescient predictions from 1962 on what books would be like in the 21st century.

Unsettling repetitions in contemporary literature, The Art of Fielding edition.

#realtalk from your editor. I have seen these faces. It is real.

More Text Classics IRL

2012-05-01T00:00:00Z

Fullers Bookshop, Hobart

Merimbula Bookshop, Merimbula

Friday Links

2012-04-27T00:00:00Z

More amazing book sculpture.

What’s your dirty little reading secret? I think we all have to confess to the last one, right? Not me, though. I’ve never read a book in my life!

I could spend a day admiring bookshelves.

Burroughs’ most famous party exploit is also his most deadly—in 1951, he shot and killed his wife while drunkenly playing ‘William Tell’ at a party above a bar in Mexico City. Literature’s most notorious party animals.

EB White on the role and responsibility of the writer.

The only three pieces of writing advice you will ever need. Number 3 applies to the publishing industry in general.

[W]hen I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split… Raymond Chandler, editor’s delight.

Text Classics IRL

2012-04-27T00:00:00Z

Abbey’s Bookshop, Sydney

Tim’s Bookshop, Kew

Avenue Bookstore, Albert Park

Readings, St Kilda

Friday Links

2012-04-20T00:00:00Z

A book you can eat…

…and a book you can smoke.

And while their strong voices differ in style, at the core Freedom and the Lorax are the same book: an urgent message about environmental stewardship, delivered by a ubiquitous curmudgeon. A literary guide for the new parent.

What not to do with a six-figure book advance.

I would live in a book igloo.

Bookmobile, 1928.

Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. Kurt Vonnegut offers some writing tips.

The Rejection Generator: taking the sting out of rejections. (Maybe.)

Bathtub as philosophy.

Typewriters of the famous and infamous.

Call for Entries for the 2012 Text Prize

2012-04-16T00:00:00Z

The Text Prize is going from strength to strength, as the publisher continues to choose winners that push the boundaries of young adult fiction.

Junior Bookseller+Publisher

Founded in 2008, the Text Prize for Young Adult and Children’s Writing is awarded annually to the best unpublished manuscript for younger readers, as determined by the team at Text.

Previous winners include Richard Newsome (The Billionaire’s Curse), Leanne Hall (This Is Shyness) and Jane Higgins (The Bridge).

The winner receives a publishing contract with Text and a $10,000 advance against royalties.

Entries open 30 April and will be accepted until 1 June.

For more info about the Text Prize and a download link for the entry form, go here.

Text Classics visit Japan

2012-04-03T00:00:00Z

Text Classics admire the first cherry blossom of the season

Text Classics find a trip to the A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima a sobering experience

Text Classics think this giant Buddha would look nice in the backyard next to the gardenias

Text Classics—more powerful than a bullet train

Text Classics wait with Hachiko at Shibuya Station

Friday Links

2012-03-30T00:00:00Z

Some more cool and unusual bookshelves. (via @GriffithREVIEW)

The Art of Google Books catalogues some of the beautiful and serendipitous things captured when old books are scanned and digitised.

In defence of the thesaurus.

‘Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.’ Advice on advice from Literary Greats.

Friday Links

2012-03-23T00:00:00Z

Amazing embroidered book clutches.

Hauntingly pretty pop-up books by Andreas Johansson.

A German club offers a night of book reading and electro music.

The Hanged Man is suspended, upside-down, by his still-incomplete thesis. Lit scene tarot.

Friday Links

2012-03-16T00:00:00Z

Amazing image of 5,000 books vomited out of a window in Spain. (via @danielle_binks)

A world record attempt for book dominoes.

Adorable Domus bookends shaped like little houses.

A list of Ernest Hemingway’s favourite books.

Scrabble, the typography edition. #wishlist #dontwedeservenicethings

5 nifty art and design projects inspired by literary classics.

A buying guide for finding the right bookshelf for your home. To store actual books on! How quaint!

Vikki Wakefield wins the Adelaide Festival Literary Award for YA

2012-03-13T00:00:00Z

Vikki Wakefield with Federal Arts Minister Simon Crean

Vikki Wakefield’s debut novel, All I Ever Wanted, won the Young Adult category of the 2012 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.

All I Ever Wanted is the story of Mim, on the cusp of finishing school and eager to start a new life as far away as possible from her criminal family and dodgy suburb. But over the nine days before her seventeenth birthday, Mim’s life turns upside down—and in the end, the same things look entirely different.

All I Ever Wanted has garnered effusive praise and a legion of fans. We spoke to Vikki about her writing process and her new work.

Did you always want to write books for younger readers?

I started reading adult novels when I was about twelve. I’d exhausted the limited range of young adult novels I could get my hands on and the YA genre was still unformed, but those few books I loved (like The Chocolate War and The Outsiders) I’ve never forgotten. These contemporary novels weren’t about pure escapism, happy endings or loaded with moral instruction. They made me feel, for a while, like I was living somebody else’s life, and I could see pieces of my own reflected in a book.

When I started writing longer fiction, I rediscovered the YA genre. While I was gone, it had come of age. Here were the books I yearned for when I was stuck in that rut between childhood and adulthood. The first voice that came to me when I opened a new Word document and typed ‘Shitty First Draft’ (thank you, Anne Lamott), was Mim’s, and the first words that came were ‘It’s easy…’—‘cause it ain’t.

So, I didn’t really decide to write for young adults. I was naïve about writing. I had no idea where Mim’s story would fit, and I didn’t care. Halfway through, I sensed that the novel would fit into the YA genre, but when I started writing I was really writing for my in-between, sixteen-year-old self.

All I Ever Wanted was your debut, and you’re working on your next book, Friday Brown, now. Does the process get easier after your first book is published?

I thought it would be easier, but it isn’t. I’m wiser about the process, but I’m not any better at controlling it. There are good days and bad days. I just have to keep showing up; eventually the good stuff floats.

With All I Ever Wanted, there was just me and the page. I dared myself to write and, beyond finishing the novel, I had no expectation. The second book will be born in the public eye. Now it’s me, my publisher, my editor, my readers, reviewers, the media…and on. That’s a lot of people behind my desk.

If the writing wasn’t difficult, I’d be suspicious. When I’m completely lost in the my first draft, I know it leaves room for layers to separate and themes to emerge, rather than starting with a one-dimensional, fully-formed story. Not knowing where my characters are taking me is compelling and if I knew where I was going I’d be bored. There’s nothing linear about my process—it’s messy and complicated and most often a case of two steps forward, one step back, three sideways.

Some things are easier. I’m more aware of my bad habits; I’m no longer fixated on word-count (I know now that a story is as long as it needs to be—no more, no less); I’m not afraid to cut a massive chunk of perfectly good writing because it doesn’t belong. I don’t worry that I’ll run out of ideas any more.

Vikki accepts her award.

Do you have any advice for aspiring YA writers?

The contemporary YA books that stay with me are those with imperfect, nuanced characters. A writer’s voice is important, but with first-person narrative (a common YA viewpoint) it should be subtle. It’s the bones of a story, not the substance. The key to creating a story that is whole and unique is character voice—once you find that, the rest will fall into place.

Don’t be afraid to take your readers to dark places—teenagers aren’t immune to tragedy and loss. Try to play up the contrast between light and shade. Contrast gives a story depth, as it does in a great film, a beautiful painting, or a memorable piece of music.

Probably the best piece of advice is the most commonly given: just write. I wasted so much time researching sites that tell you how to get published instead of actually writing. There’s only one way to get published—write a good book. Channel your energy into that. The rest is just postage and patience.

Friday Links

2012-03-09T00:00:00Z

Everyone’s a critic.

A bookmark that follows you as you turn the page: for the forgetful reader.

10 of the most powerful women characters in literature. Twitter consensus is that the absence of Jo March from this list is nothing short of a travesty.

‘The Waste Land’ written in LOLcat.

Pass the Chaucer, I’m totally Rowling. The Urban Dictionary history of western literature.

Some beautiful bookshelves.

The 10 biggest book burnings in history.

Got My Swag On

2012-03-08T00:00:00Z

Here’s Sales and Marketing Director Kirsty Wilson posing with a beautiful new Text Classics bag, which just arrived in the office. You’ll be able to pick one up at your favourite bookstore in May when the Classics launch!

Friday Links

2012-03-02T00:00:00Z

A skirt made out of books. There’s a total of 20,000 pages here, each folded by hand. Suffer for fashion, indeed.

The greatest books of all time, quantified and ranked, a process that subjective art really calls out for, right?

Taking the ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ cliché literally/literarily.

And the question mark is suspect, too. (I never liked the look of that guy.)

A dinner party with a literary theme. Something something A Moveable Feast joke something.

Come for the regular-sized books, stay for the adorably miniature book depots.

There’s a lesson for all of us, here: grammar is important, but nobody likes a Pilkunnussija. English could really use the equivalents of some of these foreign words.