Gesa Stedman rounds up the news from the past winter months, with a report on the loss of revenue for the big publishers, successes for the independent alliance, the ongoing and in political terms, rather worrying, BookTok phenomenon, as well as news of prize winners, bestsellers and some hope for […] Read more
I had the great pleasure of attending this year’s Birmingham Literature Festival. After a ‘pandemic break’ (that also gave us their fabulous “Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…” podcast) and a one-day festival version last year, the 2022 edition of #BLF took place at the Birmingham REP (Birmingham Repertory Theatre), bang in […] Read more
Gesa Stedman rounds up the news, from defunct as well as new literary prizes to delivery crises, slow successes in the North to the huge impact of TikTok on publishing. Read more
Gesa Stedman explores the complex connections and the colonial legacies which characterise Read more
Today, I have the great honour to join the blog tour for Neil Bartlett’s Address Book, published on 4 November by the fabulous indie publisher Inkandescent, with this review. In Address Book, we experience seven different stories set in different times and places, including a flat in Clerkenwell in 1891 […] Read more
Es ist soweit: rechtzeitig zur Frankfurter Buchmesse erscheint heute die deutsche Übersetzung des „Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing” Reports! Denn bei allen Unterschieden, die es zwischen den Buchbranchen in Großbritannien und Deutschland gibt, so sind doch auch viele Parallelen auszumachen, gerade was die Unterrepräsentation von Schwarzen Autor*innen und Autor*innen of Colour […] Read more
This year’s Birmingham Literature Festival is already in full swing – and an amazing example how you can turn a challenge into an opportunity! For this ‘special’ year, Festival Director Shantel Edwards and Guest Curator Kit de Waal have put together a digital edition of one of my favourite literature […] Read more
On 23 June 2020, Dr Anamik Saha (Goldsmiths, University of London) and I launched our report called Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing. We spent the previous year interviewing 113 people in publishing and bookselling, and we set out to challenge the ways ‘diversity’ was talked about. And we wanted to find […] Read more
Last year on 1 May (which is not a public holiday in the UK, as I learned) I started to work with Dr Anamik Saha at Goldsmiths, University of London, on our joint project called “Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing”. The idea had been brewing in our heads for about three […] Read more
In Germany, we celebrate “indiebookday” today – to make independent publishers more visible, to share the stories we enjoyed and, let’s face it, to distract ourselves from the crazy times we’re living in. I have to admit that I have no idea what’s going on in the German literary field […] Read more
