Lucy Atkins's Blog, page 12

I’ll be chairing a few events at the 2015 FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival this month:

Esther Freud and Rose Boyt  – sisters, novelists, daughters of artist Lucian Freud talk about growing up in a creative family at 12pm Monday 23 March.

Marion Coutts author of The Iceberg: A Memoir, a powerful and moving account of her husband art critic Tom Lubbock’s death from a brain tumour in 2008. At 4pm  Tuesday 24 March.

Maggie Gee, Priya Parmar, Michael Whitworth talk about Virginia Woolf, family friends and a lasting legacy. At 10am Friday 27th March.

see www.oxfordliteraryfestival.org for more details and tickets.

Are you writing a book? All writing, no matter what the genre  – fiction or non-fiction – can benefit from a bit of tension. At this year’s Chipping Norton Literary Festival novelist Emily Barr  and I are running Creating Tension workshop where we’ll show you how to make your work more engrossing –  whether you’re writing autobiography, historical romance or a nail-biting thriller. It’s on Sunday 26th April, 10am.

If you want to write a book (or have written one) but feel confused by the process of getting it published then come to the Oxford Literary Festival on Tuesday 24 March 2015, at 12.00. I’ll be doing a workshop with Fanny Blake – novelist, Woman & Home books editor and publishing guru – on how to get your book from brilliant idea to finished, publishable manuscript.

We’ll answer questions like –  do you need a literary agent? How do you write a book proposal? How do you approach an agent? What do editors do? We’ll be talking about fiction and non-fiction – all very informal. Bring questions, eat cupcakes.

Have You Got A Book In You? Event details here.

I’ll be reading from The Missing One at Newtonville Books in the Boston area, on Thursday 12th February, 7-9pm, and celebrating with friends, interested passersby, wine and…cheese & crackers? cupcakes?  Not sure yet. But there will definitely be snacks. And wine. Come!

Launch event info here

I keep remembering what it was like to guiltily work on a book I was sure would never be published. I wrote The Missing One while living in a suburb of Boston, USA. I’d sit in Lincoln Street Coffee (now closed – perhaps too many customers stayed 3 hours with one Americano?) or the tiny George Howell Coffee near our house George Howell Coffee   or  – frequently – the beautiful Newton Free Library  feeling really guilty (I had other things, paid things, to work on) and wondering what on earth I was doing this for.  And now, a year after it’s UK publication,The Missing One is about to hit the shelves back in its birthplace.

My favourite bookshop when we lived in the Boston area was the beautiful Newtonville Books  and they are kindly hosting the launch event for The Missing One on 12th February.  My friend, Nick, sent me this photo as he walked past the window yesterday. All those lonely, guilty, self-doubting hours in Newton, MA were worth it in the end.

I am sitting in Gibraltar Airport lounge, surrounded by Literary Festival dignitaries – from where I’m parked, I can see Lord Carey, Ben Okri, Claudia Roden, Nicholas Parsons, and Patti Boulaye.  If the plane goes down (yikes) there’ll be some fabulous headlines.

The Gibraltar Literary Festival has certainly been an interesting  - and intense – experience.  I was here for a panel discussion skilfully chaired by Erica Wagner (for many years literary editor of The Times), along with writers Joanne Harris and Kate Mosse. Among other things, we talked about the politics of book jackets: how novels by women are often dumbed down, visually, and in the process, trivialised.  Then Mosse made a point that says it all: ‘if David Nicholls had been Davina Nicholls,’ she said, ‘there would have definitely been a kiss on the cover of One Day.’ Later, I went to hear Mosse talk about her excellent new novel The Taxidermist’s Daughter (which she called ‘a bit of fun’, making me want to curl up in the foetal position and give up writing forever). Mosse set up the Orange (now Bailey’s) prize for Fiction and told the story of how, at the prize’s launch, the first question from the media was: ‘Are you a lesbian?’

You’d think the literary world would be enlightened, egalitarian, valuing only talent but there is still a long way to go (even though women buy more books than men). People like Mosse and Harris and Wagner – and the brilliant Maggie Gee, (another fascinating talk in Gibraltar), who speak out about this, articulately and uncompromisingly and with humour, are an inspiration.  I am coming off the rock feeling very lucky to have met them.

This coming Thursday – 6th November – I’ll be taking the train up to York for an event  at York St John University (Quad South Hall), 7-9.30pm with the novelist Nuala Casey. Her psychological thriller, Summer Lies Bleeding, was published in August and it’s absolutely gripping. We’ll be reading from our books and answering questions.

BOOK HERE: (FREE) http://store.yorksj.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=7&catid=17&prodid=661

And here’s Nuala (in her spare time she’s also a supermodel):

I am so happy today that my good friend, clinical psychologist Dr Frances Goodhart (www.drgoodhart.co.uk) who I wrote How to Feel Better with has received the professional endorsement she so thoroughly deserves. Last night How to Feel Better won Highly Commended at the British Medical Association Book Awards (Popular Medicine category).  I organized her words on the page but ALL the content/goodsense/compassion/25 years of expertise and hard work is hers. She really deserves this!

I have tons going on at http://blenheimpalaceliteraryfestival.com  this year.

I’ll be running two sessions with Fanny Blake www.fannyblake.co.uk a successful novelist (her most recent novel is called With A Friend Like You), and Woman & Home books editor, who also used to be editorial director of Viking Penguin. In other words, she knows what she is talking about.  On Saturday 27th September at 10.30am Fanny and I are running a writer’s workshop about how to create tension (‘It’s a Bit Tense..’ ) On Sunday 28th September at 10.30am we’re also running a workshop for anyone who wants to write and be published ’Have You Got a Book in You?’

I’m also really looking forward to chairing a Book Club event with Sadie Jones, a superb writer, who’ll be chatting with us about her most recent novel Fallout, on Saturday 27th September at 4pm. Sadie will be just back from watching her debut novel The Outcast being filmed for a BBC television drama so I’m hoping she’ll talk a bit about that too.

And finally, it’s Cocktails With Mr Selfridge. This event – on Sunday 28th September at 12.30pm  - should be a lot of fun. We’ll have Mr Selfridge screen writer Kate Brooke talking about what it’s like to create such a drama, as well as Trystan Gravelle who plays Victor, and Amy Morgan who plays Grace from accessories, giving us a peek behind the scenes. And we’ll also have a big cocktail. By that time, I’m guessing I’ll be needing one quite badly.

I will be there this weekend, in York, being a ‘book doctor’ and running a workshop with Stef Bierwerth, Quercus’s fiction publishing director. Pathetically glad to be escaping from my solitary basement to meet lots of writers, editors, agents and generally reacquaint myself with the human race. There’s even a Gala Dinner.