Writer, Journalist and Photographer
Thousands of writers are heading to Dublin city in Ireland this week in the hope of gleaning advice, encouragement and inspiration at the International Literature Festival.
I spoke to festival director Martin Colthorpe about what keeps drawing people back nearly 20 years on, as well as authors Vanessa O’Loughlin, Catherine Ryan Howard and literary agent Sallyanne Sweeney on their advice to get your book on the shelves.
Have a watch of my 3News report for TV3 Ireland:
1. The Long Room at the Library of Trinity College Dublin
Built in the early 1700s, tourists come from all over the world to see this magnificent library. Located in the heart of Dublin city, its awe-inspiring bookshelves are lined with some of Ireland’s oldest books. You can also peer at the Book of Kells, an illustrated manuscript written around the year 800.
Continue reading “10 places every literary fan should visit”
The shortlist for the Irish Book Awards was announced this week in Dublin. Bestselling authors Cecelia Ahern and Marita Conlon-McKenna spoke to me for UTV Ireland on how they felt about being nominated and why they think their books stand out.
These are my pick of the five best books of the year.
To mark the 240th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, here are my top 10 favourite quotes from her books and personal correspondence.
Haworth is a rural village on a steep hill, surrounded by fields of heather and a bitter breeze. The parsonage, where the Brontë sisters grew up and lived, is easily the biggest building there. It sits by tall trees and crooked gravestones, and is filled with remnants of the family’s lives; it does feel like they’ve just popped out for a walk on the moor. Continue reading “Visiting Haworth, the home of the Brontës”
In one sense, and in great measure, to be peculiar is to be original, and than the true originality there is no higher literary virtue.
I interviewed the super editor/writer/all-around book aficionado Claire Hennessy about her job at one of Ireland’s major publishing houses, what she looks for in YA submissions and her best advice for aspiring authors.
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives? One is so very small.
But that is the satisfaction of writing: one can impersonate so many people.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
I still think of Great Expectations as the greatest novel ever written with Magwitch, Estelle, Miss Havisham and Pip Pirrip, Dickens’s most brilliant creations. I’ve read the Dickens canon three times in my life and it’s amazing how these books have become a mirror for me, showing me how I’ve changed.
His attitude to women, for example, his sentimentality, his humour… I react differently each time I come to them… And that, of course, is the power of the greatest literature. Every time you come back to it, it’s never quite the same.”
– Anthony Horowitz
Original speech for the National Literacy Trust: http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/campaigns/anthony_horowitz_keynote_speech
Does a cover really have that much influence on whether or not we choose to read a book?
The New York Times recently published an article about new book covers being created for ‘classic’ novels to attract young-adult readers. Continue reading “Do You Judge A Book By Its Cover?”
Bestselling author J.K. Rowling, 46, has revealed the cover of her first adult book, The Casual Vacancy, which will be published by Little, Brown and Company on 27th September 2012.
The striking but simple yellow, red and black cover with white titles indicates a huge departure from Rowling’s previous work. The Harry Potter series, with which she made her name, used colourful character drawings on the cover to attract a younger audience.
Her last novel – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in a series of seven – was published in 2007. Rowling has since earned an OBE for services to children’s literature, as well as having been awarded France’s Légion d’Honneur, the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award and the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord.
The Casual Vacancy will centre on a small English town, Pagford, and the “blackly comic” parish council election that happens there.
“When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Seemingly an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war,” say Rowling’s publishers, Little, Brown. “[The character’s passing is] the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen.”
The author is currently estimated to be worth more than £620 million from the Harry Potter brand.
What do you think of Rowling’s book cover? Will you be one of the first to buy her new novel? Comment below!
The name ‘Kathleen MacMahon’ has been on the tips of literary tongues since April 2011, when the award-winning Irish journalist picked up a €684,000 advance and a two-book deal from Little, Brown at the London Book Fair for her début novel, This Is How It Ends.
Continue reading “Want a six-figure publishing deal? Here’s how Kathleen MacMahon did it…”
I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas;
they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.
And this is one: I’m going to tell it – but take care not to smile at any part of it.
– EMILY BRONTË
“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger
than any notion she had of what she might write.”
– IAN MCEWAN, Atonement
Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.
I believe in hard work and luck, and that the first often leads to the second.
– J.K. ROWLING
My favourite young adult story takes me back in time fifteen years ago, when the grass was ten feet tall and Barbies ruled the world: the start of my childhood, when I first saw the adaptation at age five. I would sit wide-eyed in front of the little black television as we pressed rewind on the VHS tape, eagerly awaiting the moment that “two figures [would trudge] up the steep path that leads…to the little village of Dorfli”.
I must have seen the film version countless times as a young girl. My older sister and I were rarely a quiet bunch, but both of us were entranced by the cheerful and curly-haired kid, Shirley Temple, in the main role of the 1937 motion picture, Heidi, directed by Allan Dwan.
It was the black-and-white simplicity of the Swedish tale on the screen that first drew me to the story, but the unforgettable characters of sullen Grandfather, excitable Klara, goat herd Peter and, of course, the young heroine Adelheid made me remember it. Despite not even being ten years old at the time of filming, lead actress Temple was by then a star in her own right, perfectly cast: she really captured the spirit of the innocent and sweet child from the original story – written in 1880 by Johanna Spyri – looking as if she’d hopped straight out of its pages.
It was only in later years that I read the book in question, but the visual connection I had with the film only served to enhance my Heidi experience. Heidi was up there with Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Princess Sara Crewe and Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children in terms of strong characters that had made a massive impact on me in film adaptations before I turned to them in their literary form.
I consider Heidi to be a young adult book in this case because I did not read the book until I was an adolescent. Heidi is perhaps the most special YA book to me because of how much the film touched me as a child. Shirley Temple was iconic in the role and the character of Heidi is forever immortalised in my mind how the young actress portrayed her. But no matter how many versions of the story there will be, it is truly one of those classic tales that will never grow old: the adventures of the little girl from the Swiss Alps.
The crazy, mad world of today is hardly ever quiet: from the bleeping of text messages, banging of doors, screeching of owls, and the blaring of the radio, sometimes curling up with a great book in your warm bed or a snug armchair can be the best way to get away from it all.
When we read, we immerse ourselves completely in the universe that the author has created: we visualise the sprawling setting, hear the thoughts and comments of the narrator and envisage the different characters. We allow ourselves to be swept away by the world of the story. If we are not convinced by the tale the writer has produced, we simply cannot believe in it.
A book must be spilling over with imagination.
That is why the book I wish I could live in would be Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling. Published in July 1999 by Bloomsbury, it became an instant bestseller, satisfying the cravings of Harry fans worldwide.
Not only did Jo Rowling stay faithful to the original world she had established in the first books of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (both of which I will discuss in this book challenge), she went above and beyond readers’ expectations. Revealing the new setting of the enchanting wizard village of ‘Hogsmeade’, showcasing the new characters of Professor Remus J. Lupin and Sirius Black (the latter being briefly mentioned in Book 1) to name but a few, and adding the chilling Dementors, scary Boggarts and majestic Hippogriffs to the list of astounding creatures that inhabit the Potter universe all served to enhance J.K. Rowling’s story.
As her protagonist, Harry, learns more about his father and why his parents died, we, the readers, follow him on his journey into the past, and, indeed, the future. The book is jam-packed with plot twists, seemingly insignificant but vital characters (Scabber and Crookshanks) and the author’s ever-present humour (Harry inflates his aunt before he returns to Hogwarts).
His discovery of the Marauder’s Map (an enchanted piece of parchment, mapping the school grounds and detailing the whereabouts of everyone on it) gives a whole new dimension to the secrets that can be uncovered in Hogwarts. It aides Harry in his adventures and proves to be a source of increased tension among the characters, in the midst of a renowned murderer on the loose. This map, however, is not the only outstanding magical object in Prisoner of Azkaban; in fact, my personal favourite is Hermione Granger’s Time Turner. The scenes that it is featured in are beautifully written and wonderfully evoked.
The world that J.K. Rowling captures in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is one of mystery, beauty and magic. Remarkably, this is the only book in which Lord Voldemort, the series’ villain, does not make an appearance, and the novel does not suffer for it. Rather, the novel’s strength is based on its engaging characters, its prose, and its originality, which is why it is the book I wish I could live in.
What book would you choose?
mareseosullivan 