The Literary Sofa
Isabel Costello
The Literary Lunch Third Blog Anniversary Competition – results
COMPETITION NOW CLOSED – SEE END OF POST FOR WINNERS It’s hard to believe that this week sees the third anniversary of the Literary Sofa and it feels like something to celebrate. The blog continues to grow in popularity with more hits than ever in the last twelve months and this week’s post is, as … Continue reading
Guest Author – Emily St John Mandel on Setting a Novel in the Future
By happy coincidence, the autumn season on the Literary Sofa has started with two truly outstanding books. When Kate Mayfield joined me last week, I mentioned my new love of memoirs. My taste is pretty broad and always evolving, often to include genres and subjects which didn’t previously attract me, in today’s case, dystopian fiction. Since … Continue reading
Guest Author – Kate Mayfield on Writing about Life and Death
In this week’s holiday reading round-up I mentioned my new love of reading memoirs, but my enthusiasm for Kate Mayfield’s The Undertaker’s Daughter dates back even further, to the first time we met almost two years ago. When Kate told me her book was about growing up in a funeral home in rural Kentucky I couldn’t … Continue reading
Summer Holiday Seven – the Verdict
September is one of my favourite months and having just returned from a glorious fortnight in Provence I’m all fired up for a busy autumn with a big writing goal (to finish my first draft by Christmas), a stellar line-up of guests here on the Literary Sofa, an avalanche of titles for Hot Picks 2015 and to … Continue reading
My Poolside TBR List 2014
It’s been a great summer so far. The weather has been fantastic for weeks on end, even in England. In June I went on a solo trip to Paris and Brittany. Progress is good – or at least not terrible – on the second novel I started three months ago (by the way, there was a fantastic response … Continue reading
First person, first draft – The Story of a Second Novel
I haven’t posted anything about my writing since the new year, but many of you know my current project is to write the first draft of my second novel in six months, finishing by the end of 2014. It’s a self-imposed deadline, because I have something to prove. I’m very grateful to have the support of … Continue reading
Book Review – A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride
This review and the novel contain strong language. It’s an occupational hazard of literary blogging that people are always asking if you’ve read a particular book, and if it’s one that everybody’s talking about I usually do cave in even if doesn’t particularly appeal to me, just to stay in the loop. There were some strange … Continue reading
Writers on Location – Kerry Hudson on Siberia
It is a huge pleasure to have Kerry Hudson join me on the Literary Sofa today. She burst onto the scene in 2012 with her debut Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma, which won the Scottish First Book Award and was nominated for five more. She was recently named … Continue reading
Writers on Location – Laura McBride on Las Vegas
The Writers on Location slot returns today and I’m delighted to welcome Laura McBride, debut author of We Are Called to Rise, which is one of my Summer Reads 2014 and the current Radio 2 Book Club choice. Like many readers I love to discover new places through fiction and also to revisit familiar ones – as a … Continue reading
Guest Author – Linda Grant on The Self in Fiction
Linda Grant is one of the UK’s leading literary novelists and writers of non-fiction. She has been awarded many prizes including the Orange Prize for her second novel When I Lived in Modern Times, 2000. As I’ve mentioned before, her novel The Clothes on their Backs, short-listed for the 2008 Booker Prize, was the book which … Continue reading
My new novel SCENT – out in paperback on 19 May 2022
The Literary Sofa 