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The Bookseller reports that on June 1st, Macmillan Children’s Books will launch a  £10,000 literary prize to be judged by independent booksellers and their customers.

Write Now! is aimed at un-agented, UK-based authors aged 18 and over. The books should be written for children aged between nine and 16 years old.

Editors Rachel Petty and Emma Young came up with the idea for the prize as part of Macmillan’s Innovation from Within programme, which supported the launch of the Bello digital imprint last year.

More information at the Pan Macmillan site.
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The bookshop Shakespeare and Company was established in the Latin Quarter in Paris in 1951 by American George Whitman as a tribute to Sylvia Beach’s 1920s bookshop of the same name.

Last year, in association with the de Groot Foundation, the bookshop established a Literary Prize to champion the novella form and to discover new writers. Judges of the 2011 prize included Times literary editor Erica Wagner, novelist Breyten Breytenbach, Darin Strauss and Dennis Loy Johnson. Over 450 novellas were submitted for the prize and the winner was Rosa Rankin-Gee.

This year, the prize will run again and the closing date is 1 September.

Novellas  (17,000 – 35,000 words) on any subject by previously unpublished writers are eligible.

For more details visit their website:The Paris Literary Prize .

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James Joyce has been in the news recently. N. Quentin Woolf has launched Big Reads, a (free-to-participate) multimedia project designed to tackle ‘one massive book each year’ – beginning with James Joyce’s Ulysses. There will be a monthly podcast, as well as an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to contribute via social media.

Woolf says: “At the end of it all we might just know a little more about the book in question, or we might have more questions than answers – but at least we’ll have read the book.” For more information: email contact@bigreads.co.uk or visit his blog www.nquentinwoolf.com

Also, the Bookseller reports that independent publishers Alma Books are launching a new imprint to make classic titles available via print on demand. Having taken over the Calder Books list in 2007 they already have 300 titles by authors including Raymond Queneau, Dante and F Scott Fitzgerald. Publisher Alessandro Gallenzi promises that the initiative will ‘rediscover more neglected classics and try to bring them to readers inventively and in a new way’.

One hundred of the books are already available via print-on-demand, and Alma aim to have 150 titles available in PoD format by the end of the year. Among the first titles to be published in September –  James Joyce’s Ulysses.

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Congratulations to Annemarie Neary, who attended the first Novelists’ Club in 2009. Having gathered a slew of honours for her short stories in recent years, including winning the 2011 Columbia Journal fiction prize, she is about to publish her first novel: A Parachute in the Lime Tree.

Synopsis: Easter Tuesday 1941, and German bombers are in the air, about to attack Belfast.  Oskar is an unwilling conscript whose Jewish sweetheart Elsa was forced to flee Berlin for Ireland two years before. Alienated from the Nazi state and from his own family, he has taken the fateful decision to bail out over neutral Ireland in search of her.

The unpredictable Kitty awakes in remote Dunkerin and finds a parachute caught in one of the trees on her land. When she discovers Oskar, injured and foraging for food in her kitchen, he becomes a rare and exciting secret. But Ireland during the Emergency is an uneasy place, and news of the parachute soon spreads…. 

Copies will be available from March 1st. To buy a copy of A Parachute in the Lime Tree directly from the publishers, click here: The History Press 

More information about Annemarie on her website: Annemarie Neary.

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Congratulations to Bren Gosling, who attended the Novelists Club in 2010. His novel, Sweeping up the Village,  has been picked as one of five shortlisted titles for the 2012 Harry Bowling Prize, an award dedicated to novels set in London. The  prize is backed by the publisher Headline, and administered by the literary agency MBA.

Novel synopsis: “At 14 in Kosovo his dreams of becoming a professional basketball player were shattered by war. Fast forward to 2002; Almir is 21, newly arrived in London and working as a Walthamstow street sweeper. One day his broom strikes a pair of discarded women’s sandals, triggering a series of crippling flashbacks which threaten his sanity. When he is moved onto a quieter beat – sweeping up Walthamstow’s village – Almir finds himself attracted to an older man with issues of his own. In the weeks surrounding the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, Almir struggles to rebuild his life. Can he conceal the guilty secret tormenting him? Sweeping up the Village is a novel about lost identity, love and the need to belong.”

To follow the fortunes of Bren’s book, visit his blog: Evolution of my novel. Bren is interested in hearing from literary agents and can be contacted  at: <nicke17@clara.co.uk>.

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The Bookseller reports that  Bloomsbury is to launch a new imprint called Bloomsbury Circus. The new  list  will be a mix of debuts and more established names:  “mostly fiction, unashamedly literary, always fresh and sometimes surprising”. In the first year there will be  nine titles, and after that  they will build up to publishing four books a month.

Alexandra Pringle, Bloomsbury’s editor-in-chief, is quoted as saying: “With fiction, you can’t successfully publish more than four titles a month because, selling into the fiction buyer, you have to have your lead, second lead, dark horse and a crime title. If you do more, you lose the focus. If we are going to grow, we have to do it in an exciting, imaginative way. This is a way we can grow, and continue to offer the service we do.”

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26 is a network of professional writers who care about words (the name 26 stands for the 26 letters of the alphabet).

In 2010, they persuaded London’s Victoria & Albert museum to choose 26 objects from its British Galleries and randomly assigned them to 26 writers. Each person wrote exactly 62 words – 26 in reflection – in response to the object. In 2011, 26  took the idea to the National Library of Wales, the Ulster Museum and the National Museum of Scotland, where writers were let loose on objects as disparate as a medieval illuminated book, a beggar’s badge and a 16th century Scottish guillotine. Now they have produced a book of the results, including contributions from Lucy Caldwell, Gillian Clarke, Alexander McCall Smith, Paul Muldoon, Bernard McLaverty and Maura Dooley.

But the book will only be produced if enough people sign up – in advance –  to buy a copy, because 26 have teamed up with the innovative startup Unbound Books and this is the way Unbound runs things. 26 has 35 days to gather enough support to make the book happen.  Click here to visit 26 Objects on the the Unbound site and buy a piece of the future (and the past).

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Plymouth University’s journal Short FICTION accepts entries to its competition between January 1st and March 31st each year. There is no restriction on theme and stories should not exceed 5000 words. Entry is £10, which allows you to submit 2 stories, as well as entitling you to a free copy of the next issue of Short FICTION. More information from their website:
 

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The Bookseller reports that Good Housekeeping has launched a £25,000 competition for budding novelists in association with Orion and agent Luigi Bonomi.  The competition is announced in the magazine’s January issue, which goes on sale today (1st December).

Good Housekeeping is looking for previously unpublished writers in any genre apart from children’s, with first prize a £25,000 advance, help from the Orion editorial team and Bonomi, and the chance to have the winning book published with coverage in the magazine. Judges will include Kate Mosse, Bonomi, Orion fiction publishing director Kate Mills and Good Housekeeping editorial director Lindsay Nicholson.

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Mainstream publishing suddenly seems to have fallen in love with the idea of issuing short stories in digital formats. Orbit Short Fiction, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of the Hatchette Book Group which launched in the US in April, has announced that it will be publishing short stories in the UK from the start of 2012. And last week, Dan Franklin announced that Random House is launching a company-wide short story brand called Story Cuts, which will publish stories by the likes of Ruth Rendell and Julian Barnes.

The Bookseller reports Franklin as saying: “This is the iTunes model, really. It hasn’t ever been applied to books yet . . . ‘ Not so!! In the UK, Etherbooks and Shortfire Press are two digital-only publishers that have been specialising in short fiction for quite some time.

Etherbooks have a free app available from the AppStore, and via that you can download short content by various authors –  including Paul MacCartney, Hilary Mantel and me – at various prices (mostly 69p). Shortfire stories can be read in PDF form or on Kindles, e-readers and mobiles and cost 99p.  Both companies have been active  for some time and can be congratulated on being ahead of the pack.

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