Authors Electric

  There's been a ton of hype about Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang, a novel about today's publishing world, and every ounce of it is well deserved.  I can't imagine that anyone who has any connection to writing or publishing wouldn't love every moment of it - even the uncomfortable ones. It portrays exactly what it is like to be a struggling writer, exactly what it is like when you do find a publisher and end up disappointed with the results, and exactly what it is like when you finally hit the jackpot and become a bestseller, and a media sensation.  It is paced like a thriller, with the characters chasing one another through the moral maze of cancel culture, social media hate campaigns, and the thorny diversity issues of who has the right to write about what? There are moments when the reader wonders if it is ever right to write about anything, but Rebecca F. Kuang forges fearlessly ahead, kicking every sensitivity and taboo into touch. This is a fantastic, thoughtful, ...

I have just ordered a copy of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me . I fear that my open admission of this is enough to render me the target of social media hatred. Until very recently, Kate Clanchy had a solid gold reputation as an extraordinarily gifted English teacher, particularly in the area of creative writing and particularly among young people from a wide variety of ethnic groups and disadvantaged backgrounds. Her pupils flourished under her inspiring tutelage, writing poems of an originality and sophistication way beyond their years, and many have since gone on to successful careers as poets as adults. In this memoir, Clanchy looks back on 30 years of a job she clearly loved and excelled in, writing with such power and conviction that the book won the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Writing. Then, a couple of weeks ago, things went wrong. Badly wrong. A scathing review of the book on Goodreads attracted other negative attacks. Clanchy was accused of using racist stere...