Category: Creative writing

  • Editors talk about editing: Constance Hale

    We start 2025 with a series of posts from ‘Editors Talk about Editing’, on the 10th anniversary of publication. The book brought together, for the first time, interviews with top editing practitioners. The first extract is from freelance book editor Constance Hale.

  • The PhD supervisor as editor

    When it comes to PhDs in Creative Writing, it may seem obvious to think about the supervisor as a kind of editor. But this role also has relevance for other research subjects.

  • Editors talk about editing: the back story

    Newly published: a book of interviews which juxtaposes people in different kinds of publishing. The aim is to go beyond familiar ideas about how they differ and understand patterns in their practices and concerns.

  • Fighting on two fronts

    There is a recurring tension between disciplines that are practice-led, and those that see themselves as the champions of ‘theory’. The former often find themselves fighting on two fronts.

  • Publishing and the university

    Every year, at the London Book Fair, there are dozens of fascinating talks. But in 2013 there didn’t seem to be any talks about the university’s place in publishing. So I proposed one.

  • Why Kenneth Burke is worth reading

    A colleague asked for help in understanding Kenneth Burke. I know how he feels; I had to clear a whole week to read The Rhetoric of Motives. But it turned me into a massive fan.

  • The raw and the cooked

    A book chapter that maps the publishing platforms and relationships that determine how nonfiction storytelling reaches an audience, and puts forward an argument about what makes a piece of writing ‘authentic’.

  • Slow publishing

    A round-up of examples where people make the case for the luxury of time and reflection in a speedy world, and the importance of providing value in publishing: to offer something worth buying and keeping.

  • Personal experience, turned outwards

    Reporting – finding out about the external world – can be understand as a form of personal experience, which is deliberately turned outward and tested by verification. Authenticity exists not only in marginal practices, but also mainstream ones.

  • Failure Files on tour

    The developmental concept of the ‘good-enough mother’ is applicable to public life. Societies that demand perfection get into trouble because mistakes go uncorrected. But so do those that find awfulness in everything.