Novelists

What happens when "bigger is better" becomes an ethos for an entire society? From SUVs that will never see a dirt road to McMansions that could fit several families, American culture right now abounds with an excess of, well, excess. The normalization of this can distort priorities, creating a sense that something far larger than what we need is what we want.  Read more

It's often lamented that the art of deferred gratification has vanished from our instantly downloadable culture, but the increasing popularity of serialised novels suggests this may not be the whole story.  Read more

Authors have hit back at writer Will Self's assertion that the novel is "doomed to become a marginal cultural form".

Self's interview in the Guardian, published on Saturday (17th March), featured insights into his thoughts on the Iraq war, e-readers, the future of fiction and female writers.  Read more

Long before the rise of "autofiction", and the contemporary wave of authors drawing from their own lives for their novels - Rachel Cusk, Geoff Dyer, Sheila Heti, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ben Lerner and others - many writers in the first half of the 20th century were experimenting with the limits of autobiography.  Read more

When I'm asked what I do and reply that I'm a writer, people tend to react in one of two ways. Either they tell me they're thinking of writing a book too, and proceed to describe it in detail, or they express surprised admiration because they understand that it's hard to write a book and even harder to get it published.  Read more