Wisdom and Sense interviews Rose Tremain
Rose Tremain just won the Orange Prize for her book, The Road Home. In this 1996 interview with Elena Dedukhina, she talks about literary prizes in detail. Tremain was a Booker Prize judge in 1988 and 1990. On literary prizes, she says: “Prizes are confirming. Self-belief is a profound requisite of being a writer and — as with any self-generated phenomenon, it can falter from time to time. Winning a prize helps to get you back on the road of self-belief.”
Philip Pullman talks to the Telegraph
It’s all about age-branding. If you haven’t heard, books in the UK will be marketed towards very specific age groups come Autumn. Books will be printed with labels stuck on covers indicating that a book is for the “9+” group or the “11+” group. Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, is not impressed: “I don’t want to see the book itself declaring officially, as if with my approval, that it is for readers of 11 and upwards or whatever. I write books for whoever is interested.”
Sophie Kinsella tackles the 5-minute interview
She’s the perfect judge for the new Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance (is there a book award they haven’t thought of?) with her hugely successful Shopaholic series, and here she discusses buying high heels but never wearing them: “The moment for those gold-encrusted Manolo Blahniks just never seems to present itself.”
Frank Herbert visits the Mother Earth News
I couldn’t go past this one. It’s just about the longest interview you’re ever likely to read, in one of the strangest places. I bet when you’re done with this, you’ll want to grab a sleeping bag and head for the wilderness, because Herbert likes to do that, and because the ads on this site are all about appreciating nature. Herbert’s first words: “I’ve always considered myself to be a yellow journalist.”
Daniel Wallace is interviewed at Cosmoetics
This is really worth a read. Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish opens up about writing, publishing, MFA programs, and the fact that he’s “never been a huge reader”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an author say that. His comments on an author’s luck:
I think luck plays a big part in a writer’s career. But my first five novels didn’t get published because I was unlucky; they didn’t get published because they were bad. I had the same agent for three of those books. So Big Fish was definitely a better book than the others. It was turned down by 16 houses before Algonquin took it. Still, here, there was luck involved. Algonquin had been expected a book by one its established writers and it didn’t come in. They needed a book to take its place, and quick. They opened that day’s mail and what was in it: my book.