I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

I always have lots of zany ideas for promotional stuff as publication nears.

Belgium is a country with a split personality.

What the short story needs above all is for one of the big publishers to get an equivalent series up and running and to support it and promote it.

Increasingly, those who used to teach and write critical or theoretical texts are writing fiction, poetry and so on; and kinds of texts are being produced that call for budding readers rather different from those who studied literature in the past.

Who was it recently invented some machine that will enable her to sign a book from 5,000 miles away? Margaret Atwood. Get off your arse, love, and sign it in person. Publishers and circumstance made you a bestselling author. Give a little back.

The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.