Literary Agent
Robert Popper’s alter-ego Robin Cooper’s hilarious volume THE TIMEWASTER LETTERS is published in the US this week. To celebrate this event Robin Cooper has been making prank phone-calls to a number of establishments with bizarre requests. Oh deary me….listen here
We had a great night out at the Arthur C Clarke awards for the Best Science Fiction book of the year as part of an exclusive event in partnership with the opening of this year’s SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival. . Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts was one of 6 shortlisted titles from about 60 read by the judging panel and Black Man by Richard Morgan scooped the pool. Steven is pictured (left) with his girlfriend Mel. Here are some more pictures
Patrick Neate and the Bookslam team (pictured) won a much coveted Sony Radio Award last week for Best Internet Programme for the Book Slam podcast. Download the seventh episode now. It features Richard Milward reading from ‘Apples’ [Faber], El Crisis and the South London soul of Jamie Woon.
It is great to see this project coming together in such a smart fashion. Val Hudson and her team at Headline are set to publish this Autumn and the early signs are that we will all have a massive bestseller on our hands. Sir Cliff Richard OBE is the biggest-selling artist of all time, selling over 250 million records around the world since he burst onto the music scene in 1958. But how has he kept his appeal all these years? In a world fuelled by drink, sex and drugs, he is perennially attractive without any of those things that keep other singers’ profiles high.
Yesterday started early for author Janie Hampton who launched her book The Austerity Olympics: When the Games Came to London in 1948 on Radio 4’s Today programme in an interview with John Humphreys. It was an appearance which helped propel her vivid, atmospheric re-telling of the extraordinary story of the post-war London Olympics to the Number One spot on the Amazon Sports Book bestseller list. The launch at Waterstone’s Oxford later that day saw a packed crowd of well-wishers including Aurum press editor Graham Coster, author Philip Pullman, iconic sportsman Sir Roger Bannister and a host of Olympians from the 1948 games - some, rather impressively, still fitting into their official blazers! Janie demonstrated how various items of sporting kit were effected by rationing and also sang, with great gusto, the official 1948 Olympic song - while holding a ‘flaming’ torch. Pictures HERE
Our clients were much in evidence at the Irish Book Awards last week in Dublin. Robert Kirby’s client Anthony Horowitz presented two awards, John Boyne was a guest of his publisher Random House Books, Robert Harris was shortlisted for The Tubridy Show Award for THE GHOST and Niamh Greene’s THE SECRET DIARY OF A DEMENTED HOUSEWIFE was shortlisted for both the Newcomer Of The Year Award and The Galaxy Popular Fiction Book Of The Year. Pictured are John Boyne and Niamh Greene. For lots more pictures see here.
Welcome to Amy Krouse Rosenthal (and her daughter Paris) who are in the UK this week to promote ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF AN ORDINARY LIFE published by Grove Atlantic. As Viv Groskop said, in the Sunday Express, ‘Amy is a witty, astute observer of modern life in all its baffling guises…ENCYCLOPAEDIA makes you feel glad to be alive’.
Congratulations to the multi-talented Robert Popper for winning a BAFTA last night for PEEP SHOW in the Situation Comedy category. The paperback of his hilarious book The Timewaster Diaries is published by Little Brown later this year.
John Boyne’s THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS has been awarded the prestigious Qué Leer prize for the best novel translated into Spanish. John receives the award at a prize ceremony held in Barcelona later today. My colleague Jane Willis here at United Agents has just sold Maltese rights for John’s novel - this is a first for her and the agency.
In common with most people in publishing I will be at Earls Court for the next three days for the London International Book Fair. The Bookseller’s free downloadable digital daily magazine is well-worth reading. Check it out here.
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