How a Midwest Teacher Went From Posting Scary Stories on Reddit to a Film Deal for His Debut Novel
uk.sports.yahoo.com – Wednesday June 28, 2023
Jimmy Juliano’s debut novel, “Dead Eleven,” has an unusual backstory.
The book, out Tuesday, is a spooky tale of a remote island where inhabitants are obsessed with ’90s nostalgia, which earned a coveted jacket blurb from “Goosebumps” guru R. L. Stine and already has a film development deal with A+E Studios. But Juliano is the first to admit that his path into publishing and Hollywood “feels like a back door into the industry.”
Juliano, an educator who works at Lake Forest High School in suburban Chicago, first made a name for himself as u/Red_Grin, a Reddit user posting scary stories to the NoSleep subreddit. The community, with over 17 million members, is “a place for redditors to share their scary personal experiences” — and while the stories (probably) aren’t real, “treat everything as though it is a true recount of events.”
New Publisher Listing: Out-Spoken Press
firstwriter.com – Wednesday June 28, 2023
A London-based independent publisher of poetry and critical writing with the aim of providing a platform for compelling writing from voices that were (and remain) under-represented in mainstream publishing. Publishes full-length poetry collections and pamphlets.
New Publisher Listing: Gill Education
firstwriter.com – Tuesday June 27, 2023
Publishes books for the primary, secondary, and further education markets. Welcomes proposals from first time and experienced authors alike. All subject areas are of interest. See website for full guidelines.
New Literary Agent Listing: Abigail Nathan
firstwriter.com – Sunday June 25, 2023
Looking for engaging plots and convincing characters. Something that will keep her turning the pages and that will stay with her after she’s finished reading. There are some rules and conventions it pays to follow, but something a bit weird or slightly (or very) unexpected will pique her interest, and characters that touch a nerve or worlds that make us question the status quo are always welcome. Above all, she’s looking for great stories, told well – fiction in general and all things genre: sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, horror, crime, thriller, romance (and any combination of those), for adult, YA or middle grade.
Creative writing: stretching your imaginative powers
silversurfers.com – Friday June 23, 2023
Most children make up stories when they are young but as real life begins to take over, these creative powers are often left to dwindle.
While some people continue writing and making up stories throughout their lives, others tend to stop when they reach a certain age.
However, there are many benefits associated with creative writing and it’s a hobby that’s well worth re-exploring as an adult.
Put your imagination to work by finding out how it feels to make up stories, write poetry, pen your memoirs or simply experiment on the page.
Culture Creative Entertainment Hires Netflix’s Sherley Ibarra As Literary Agent
uk.news.yahoo.com – Wednesday June 21, 2023
Culture Creative Entertainment, the nascent talent agency founded by former Abrams Artists Agency agents Brad Rosenfeld, Paul Weitzman and Karen Kirkland, has hired a new literary agent.
The company has hired Sherley Ibarra, who joins from Netflix, where she was Manager of Animation Outreach & Engagement. Ibarra was at the streamer for over three years, having previously been Vice-President of Creative Talent Development & Outreach at Nickelodeon.
At CCE, she will represent a diverse roster of talent working across TV series and features in both live-action and animation.
Taking poetry off the page
thebookseller.com – Tuesday June 20, 2023
Are you a lover of visual poetry and just don’t know it yet? From childhood encounters with Lewis Carroll’s "The Mouse’s Tale" through to the influence of the concrete poetry movement on design (would the Yves Saint-Laurent logo have been invented without the inventions of the Brazilian concrete poets of the 1950s? – I doubt it), visual poetry is in the air all around us. More than that, it’s also increasingly incorporated into architecture and printed on buildings, and with a new exhibition called "Poetry & Architecture" just opened at Hay Castle, there’s no better time for publishers to embrace this genre-shattering form.
Soviet-style groupthink means only one thing: terrible books
telegraph.co.uk – Tuesday June 20, 2023
In 1957, the manuscript of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and handed to the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. The book was hailed as a masterpiece, and in 1958, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, an honour that he initially accepted, but then, under pressure from the Soviet literary establishment, renounced.
Is Doctor Zhivago still a masterpiece? If excellence in art is the ability to channel brilliance of imagination into equally brilliant language, then Pasternak stands as one of the indisputable pillars of Russian literature.
But the definition of excellence is changing. Julie Finch, the chief executive of the Hay literary festival, observed that, “Youth audiences don’t really care for something that was published 20 years ago, they care about what’s popular now.”
Alongside popularity, a host of other qualities are now required. The self-appointed cultural commissars of our own time are just as vigilant as the state apparatchiks of the former Soviet Writers’ Union, and their verdict can be equally fatal to a writer’s work.
I was sacked for writing about trans censorship
unherd.com – Tuesday June 20, 2023
For a quarter of a century, on and off, Melbourne’s “quality” daily newspaper The Age not only published my words — it was my intellectual home.
I had joined the paper’s staff around the turn of the century as a trainee journalist, progressing to social affairs reporter, senior writer, leader writer and, most recently, weekly columnist. For the most part, my views aligned with the paper’s superego, which fluctuates between soft Left and small “l” liberal. And there was always space for dissent, even when my opinions sharply diverged from The Age consensus — more on that soon.
About two years ago, my harmonious relationship with the paper began to deteriorate. The tension reached its climax last week when the editor, Patrick Elligett, sacked me as a columnist. The breakdown in trust was down to one issue: gender-identity politics, the trans debate — or severe lack thereof.
My dismissal was linked to a feature I wrote on youth gender transition that had been commissioned by a previous editor, Gay Alcorn, and which Elligett had refused to run. In response, I told Elligett that I intended to publish the piece on my new Substack and would disclose that he rejected it. He looked uncomfortable, but said The Age would take it on the chin.
And so, early this month I published the feature, announcing to the world that if they wanted to know why the piece was rejected, they would have to ask Elligett himself. A standing army of gender sceptics on Twitter did just that, under the hashtag “gutless” . This can’t have been pleasant for Elligett. But he attributed the sacking to another remark in my launch statement where I flagged that in future posts I’d be writing on gender-identity politics more broadly, “without the copy being rendered unreadable by a committee of woke journalists redacting words they deem incendiary, such as ‘male’”. Elligett responded: “Obviously we can’t have our columnists publicly disparaging the publication like that so we won’t be commissioning further columns from you.”
New Magazine Listing: Funeral Business Solutions
firstwriter.com – Friday June 16, 2023
Different from traditional association magazines or trade journals because it is specially-crafted to bring you the best industry specific business news and solutions that will help you to make effective business decisions for your staff, company, and client families.
Our magazine design and layout is purposefully easy to read and digest in short segments. We know that the average funeral professional has an unpredictable schedule and an effective business magazine gives the reader shorter editorials that get to the point without fluff.
Our writers provide actionable ideas and effective strategies that will help you, the industry professional, run a more profitable business. Issues are published every two months, giving you ample time to digest 8-12 articles, latest industry headlines, the included Funeral Home Success Stories, Vendor Company Spotlights, Industry Book Overviews and more.
Our goal is to never bore you or waste your precious time, so our editors consider each article, press release, and spotlight carefully to make sure it can in some way benefit a funeral director running a business.
At the end of each day, we are primarily a magazine of business solutions for an industry that our publisher, editors, and writers love.
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