My favorite book as a child

I remember loving James and The Giant Peach, but I really loved Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman. It has one of the funniest non sequiturs in all literature. In this book of opposites, big, little, up, down comes a dog in a hat asking another dog…”Do you like my hat?” The other dog says “No, I do not like that hat.” Then they say goodbye to each other. Made me laugh then and makes me laugh now as I am writing this.

A book that cemented me as a writer

I got 840 COMBINED on my SATs and could barely get out of high school. I NEVER thought I would write a book let alone 12. One day, my four year old, Annie, marched into my office and said, “When I was LITTLE I used to wear diapers but now I use a POTTY!” It made me laugh that she was talking about her past the way I talk about shags and Quaaludes. I wrote…When I Was Little; a Four Year Old’s Memoir of Her Youth. It made me laugh and then I wrote a list of then and now and realized at the end when I was crying that it was a book and it just came out of me. My books come out of me in a flow. I never anticipate when one will come and when they do I am always delighted. Annie Bananie by Leah Komaiko was a favorite of my daughter, Annie, and was a book I read countless times. It is a book about best friends saying goodbye to each other. I can recite it and do so in a moment’s notice. It has my favorite line….”Who will feed your porcupine?”

The book I’ve read over and over again

Annie Bananie, Go, Dog. Go!, James and The Giant Peach, and The Owl and The Pussycat, which I read to my son Tom every night when he was young. I love the Jan Brett version.

A classic I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read

Black Beauty. It just seemed like we were all supposed to and I never did.

The book I pretend I’ve read

Hahahahahahaha. There is a stack that I USED to keep next to my bed so if you came over and looked in my bedroom, you might look at my stack and say…”Damn, she’s well read!” It included a book about meditation, as well as the History of Western Civilization.

The book that I read in secret as a kid

I believe it was page 52 of The Godfather where Sonny has sex during the wedding in the bathroom. I also was fond of a sex romp about stewardesses called Coffee, Tea or Me? I was a teenager. What do you expect. 

The book that people might be surprised to learn I loved

Shōgun, King Rat…James Clavell novels. Early loves. King Rat saved me when I went on a vacation to the island of Sardinia with my father and his new wife and baby and my teenage sister and I was off in a room by myself. With no one to really hang out with. In this rented house was a copy of King Rat. It truly saved me from loneliness and a very boring summer vacation.

The book I consider to be grossly overrated

I try not to judge. Books are little miracles, that the words come out in their divine order and then are arranged on pages and then we get to read them. I am too big a fan of books to sit in judgment of them. I can be snarky, but I don’t need to here.

The last book that made me laugh out loud

I’m not much of a laugher with books. I rarely read books with comedy in them. I live with a very funny man and my children are both funny, so I laugh plenty at home.

The last book that made me cry

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry was very emotional for me. Also, Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese. 

My literary hero

I try to stay away from heroes and heroines. I’m not much for idol worship in any areas. The daily struggle of being human is too precious and serious for me to be flip about it. I find nurses who work in pediatric burn units to be true heroines and heroes every day. Nurses in general. People are so kind. In myriad places and ways. I truly feel that way.

My literary crush

I read nonfiction, biographies, and then long and short form fiction — rinse and repeat. I try to throw in historical fiction, which is my favorite genre. Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel are as good as anything I’ve ever read. 

The TV show I think doesn’t get its due

Getting On, The Americans. 

The last TV series I binged

The Night Manager.

My all-time favorite movie

The Godfather: Part II.

The last book I gave as a gift

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. I would like to say that I gave it WAY before Oprah started giving it. I am ahead of the Oprah curve on many things, including East of Eden which has my favorite prose ever. 

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man.  Nothing was ever created by two men. 

There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. 

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the preciousness, the mind of man. 

By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. 

It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken. 

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. 

And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. 

This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. 

Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.”

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

The book I’d use to squash a bug

Fifty Shades of Grey Matter or my DVD copy of A Bug’s Life.

The song that always makes me feel better

“Sugar Sugar” by the Archies, also “You Can Close Your Eyes” by James Taylor. My husband and daughter recorded it as a gift for my 50th birthday, but I sob uncontrollably when I listen to it even though I feel better after.

The last album I listened to

Kygo, Cloud Nine.

The first album I bought with my own money

Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Have I ever bought my own book in a bookstore?

I buy my books A LOT! My books are my best thing, the clearest offering of my mind and heart and humor. Thanks to my illustrating partner, Laura Cornell, these books are perfect gifts, gifts that keep on giving. I buy them for people ALL the time.

What I’m reading right now

Dalva by Jim Harrison.

Is Wonder Woman queer? It’s a complicated question. She’s one of the most popular and iconic superheroes of all time, but her history is a lot more muddled than brethren like Batman and Superman. Her origin has been reworked multiple times this year alone, and some of those new versions (Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s Wonder Woman: Earth One and Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott’s “Year One” storyline in the flagship Wonder Woman title) strongly imply that Diana has had romantic and/or sexual relationships with other Amazon women on their paradise island of Themyscira. Rucka was recently interviewed about this by Comicosity, and confirmed that the character was queer (a word that has many definitions, but used here to refer to romantic and/or sexual interest in people of the same gender). His thoughtful response deserves to be quoted at length. 

“When you start to think about giving the concept of Themyscira its due, the answer is, ‘How can they not all be in same-sex relationships?’ Right? It makes no logical sense otherwise. It’s supposed to be paradise. You’re supposed to be able to live happily. You’re supposed to be able … to have a fulfilling, romantic and sexual relationship. And the only options are women. But an Amazon doesn’t look at another Amazon and say, ‘You’re gay.’ They don’t. The concept doesn’t exist. Now, are we saying Diana has been in love and had relationships with other women? As Nicola and I approach it, the answer is obviously yes. And it needs to be yes for a number of reasons. But perhaps foremost among them is, if no, then she leaves paradise only because of a potential romantic relationship with Steve [Trevor]. And that diminishes her character. It would hurt the character and take away her heroism … She doesn’t leave because of Steve. She leaves because she wants to see the world and somebody must go and do this thing. And she has resolved it must be her to make this sacrifice.”

This response is remarkable for a lot of reasons, not least because it seems to be at odds with DC’s upcoming big-budget Wonder Woman movie starring Gal Gadot as Diana and Chris Pine as Steve Trevor. Rucka, however, insists that he has never gotten any pushback from DC on this. 

“I really don’t like the idea that there are people out there who might think DC is being mealy-mouthed about this. They’re not,” Rucka said. “No one wants to be taken out of context by ignorant people, but nobody at DC has ever said, ‘She’s gotta be straight.’ Nobody. Ever. They’ve never blinked at this … They would, I think, like any business, prefer this not be an issue to anybody. But most of us human beings would also really rather this not be an issue for anybody anymore. It is what it is. This is how the Amazons live.”

Wonder Woman’s queerness is not entirely a new concept. The original Wonder Woman comics, written by creator William Moulton Marston and illustrated by Harry Peter, feature many scenes evocative of bondage and lesbian erotica. Marston was an eccentric figure who spent most of his life in a polyamorous marriage, and his work on the character has inspired at least two recent book-length examinations: The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore, which dug into the real-life history of Marston, and Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics by Noah Berlatsky, a textual analysis of those themes in the comics themselves. 

Read Rucka’s full interview here.

The That’s So ’90s Pop! activity book is an endlessly entertaining way to immerse yourself in ’90s nostalgia, and EW is excited to exclusively premiere several pages.

Patrick Sullivan’s adult activity book, which technically spans the late ’90s to early ’00s, is filled with clever coloring pages, word searches, and mazes featuring the most memorable pop stars of the era. It also hilariously pokes fun at the time period: The Heart of the Ocean maze references the bizarre Titanic-inspired dialogue in Britney Spears’ “Oops!… I Did It Again,” and the *NSYNC puzzle mocks Justin Timberlake’s ramen noodle hair by topping it with tomato sauce and meatballs.

The book comes out on Oct. 4 from Clarkson Potter. See the cover and five pages from the book below. Put a Now That’s What I Call Music! CD in your boom box, grab a Go-Gurt from the fridge, and let the memories come flooding back.

Marvel Comics great Stan Lee is to enter the Chinese film market by co-creating a new superhero movie character, Monkey Master.

According to Variety, Lee will work on the project with Liquid Comics’ Sharad Devarajan, with whom he created Indian superhero Chakra: The Invincible. While Chakra emerged as a 65-minute animated film on Cartoon Network India, Monkey Master is aiming higher: with backing from China’s Shinework Pictures and Graphic India, Lee and Devarajan are planning an international English-language blockbuster.

Lee said in a statement: “I have always been fascinated by the Chinese and Indian cultures which are so philosophical and rich in tradition and morality. Monkey Master will be unique in how it interweaves Chinese and Indian myth to create a hero that will entertain fans across the world with his martial arts skills and unstoppable superpowers.”

Devarajan added: “The story will take place between ancient and modern-day China and India as the myth of monkey warriors, known to both cultures, come together in the creation of a modern-day superhero.”

According to producers, no cast has yet been hired, but a “western director” is likely, with a shoot starting at the end of 2017.

The Monkey Master project follows the announcement that a “Kingsman-style” 70s-set biopic of Lee is being developed at 20th Century Fox.

Deborah Levy, Graeme Macrae Burnet and Paul Beatty might be competing for the Man Booker prize and a £50,000 cheque if they win next month, but readers around the world are being offered the opportunity to vie for their own literary award – where the winner will “never have to buy a book again”.

Launched on Friday by independent London bookshop Heywood Hill to mark its 80th anniversary, the Library of a Lifetime award will give its winner “one newly published and hand-picked hardback book per month, for life, delivered anywhere in the world”.

To win, readers must nominate the book that has meant the most to them, with the winner chosen at random in a prize draw. The title must have been published in English, or translated into English, after 1936, the year Heywood Hill was founded. The Mayfair shop, which sells a mix of new, old and antiquarian titles, was founded by George Heywood Hill, with the help of the woman who would become his wife, Anne Gathorne-Hardy, on 3 August 1936.

Karin Scherer, senior Heywood Hill bookseller, said that “for the winner it will be an intellectual adventure of a lifetime … Every reader in the world will want to know about this life-changing prize. Whoever wins the first prize will never have to buy a book again. Instead they can look forward to a lifelong relationship with our bookshop and our booksellers.”

Authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Donna Leon and William Boyd have already put forward their own nominations, with Ishiguro plumping for Dostoevsky’s The Devils, calling “every character bonkers”, Leon for Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy because “it’s wonderfully funny” and Boyd for Nabokov’s Pale Fire, which he said was “unique, mind-boggling, hilarious”.

The prize is inspired by Heywood Hill’s A Year in Books subscription service, which offers users a reading consultation with the shop’s booksellers to determine their interests, and then a new book each month. One customer in Connecticut, said the shop, has received a monthly book from Heywood Hill for the last 40 years.

“Every person is different. Before we start, we will sit down with the prize winner and find out their reading preferences, and any likes and dislikes,” said Scherer.

Second prize will be a one-year subscription to A Year in Books, and third prize a hardback book every other month for a year. Heywood Hill said that once the competition closes on 31 October, it will use the entries to pull together a list of books covering the last 80 years of English-language fiction and nonfiction.

Today is International Translation Day. Look at any bookshop bestseller shelf in the UK and you’ll see translated names everywhere: Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Haruki Murakami, Swedish names all over crime fiction. Recent sales figures seem to suggest that the British public has steadily become more open to European and international authors: according to Nielsen, which undertook research for the International Man Booker prize this year, the number of translated books bought in Britain increased by an astounding 96% between 2001 and 2015. Translated fiction sells better, overall, than English literary fiction and made up 7% of all UK fiction sales in 2015.

But when you examine what is translated into English, only 1.5% of all books published in the UK are translations. Compare that to Germany (a bigger book market than the UK), France or Italy, where translated fiction is 12.28%, 15.9% and 19.7% of the respective markets, according to a 2015 study by Literature Across Frontiers.

Its author, Alexandra Büchler argues that the UK sale figures are pulled up by bestsellers. “I don’t think we are getting the picture of piles of translated books not selling, because booksellers are really picky about who ends up on the shelves,” she says. “The independent booksellers who were happier to get translated books are disappearing.” Bestsellers are the exception, she says, and beyond those lucky few, the plight of translated fiction remains pretty grim.

But Daniela Petracco, from Elena Ferrante’s UK publisher Europa Editions, says that Ferrante’s Neapolitan series has actually helped their other authors’ sales, because the sheer popularity of the Italian novelist “made reading translations more familiar to a wider British audience”. However, Petracco adds, she is still dreaming about “translation-blind readers” and “bookshops that don’t ghettoise translated fiction in the back room”.

Where does this bias come from? With Brexit in mind, some point to an insular mindset, mixed with an imperialist complex. “Our alienation from Europe is partly to do with the fact that we don’t read much European literature,” says Susan Curtis-Kojakovic from Istros Books, a publishing house specialising in south and east European authors. “We read so much about America. And to me, Wisconsin is not any more interesting than Bucharest. And in fact Bucharest is to me nearer to my culture.”

James Tennant from PEN International blames lack of translations on “the deep-seated protectionism of an island people and a certain complacency coming from the fact that our language happens to be, for the time being, the global lingua franca”. Curti-Kojakovic further explains: “We have so much literature in English – from India, South Africa and so on – that we have the false impression that we have the world in English.”

Being published in English does indeed increase an author’s chances of an international career. But Tennant warns: “Too often in former British colonies, local-language writing and storytelling are being neglected due to pressure or desire to conform to the globalised publishing market, working in English.”

This also means that British publishers can work without speaking or reading other languages, which makes them unable to source foreign books. Anna Webber, at United Agents, says: “There are very few people [in publishing] who speak languages other than English, so they have to rely on readers’ reports. That’s why unless something is surefire hit internationally, where you have a lot of publicity and success in other countries, people are very cautious. Understandably - I wouldn’t take a book myself if I couldn’t read it. But the problem is that not many publishers speak foreign languages … This is why I have to stick to representing a low number of foreign authors – about 10% of all the writers I work with.”

Some publishers used to blame costs – the minimum UK rate recommended by PEN and the Society of Authors for translation is £90 per 1,000 words, and in addition to that, if an author doesn’t speak English, an interpreter will need to be paid for public appearances. But Tennant says that today, “so many foundations, cultural ministries or institutes offer support that it’s not a problem that’s insurmountable”. However, it is wealthier countries that are often the ones with budgets for translation funds, which means that those languages gain a cost advantage to languages from poorer countries.

Webber outlines further problems with how subsidy schemes work: “The funding body wants a proof of purchase and the publisher is unable or unwilling to buy the book unless there is a guarantee for the funding. So it’s like the cat that bites its own tail.” She believes that more grants to support sample translations would be a helpful step.

But it all starts from school, according to Ann Morgan, who is reading 196 books – one from every country in the world – for her blog A Year of Reading Around the World. Morgan says that “at school in the UK we don’t really read translations, we just don’t develop that habit”; unlike French or German students, schoolchildren below A-level in the UK – with the exception of International Baccalaureate students – are only asked to read literature originally written in English.

So how do we break this chain? The International Man Booker prize has pointed to one way forward by awarding half of its £50,000 prize to the translator for the first time this year. Schools, bookshops, cultural institutions and publishers should follow. But we can all make a conscious decision to read more translated books. Because the way things stand, the UK is not just missing out on great books, but further isolating itself from the rest of the world.

Wonder Woman is queer, her writer has confirmed: “I don’t know how much clearer I can make it”.

Greg Rucka, who worked on Wonder Woman for DC Comics throughout the 2000s, returned to DC Comics this year for the new Rebirth series commemorating her 75th year in print.

He told the comic news site Comicosity the character had “obviously” been in love and relationships with other women, as has long been speculated by fans.

Wonder Woman is known as the warrior princess Diana in her homeland of Themyscira, an island populated only by Amazonian women.

The confirmation was met with celebration on social media.

But Rucka cautioned against prioritising “the desire to see representation on the page” at the expense of good writing and character development.

While he acknowledged the demand from audiences to have characters from marginalised groups leading books and series, he said it was a “thorny question” when his job was to “serve the characters as best I can”.

Rucka was critical of writers that shoehorned their characters’ sexualities into their narratives for the sake of doing so.

“The character has to stand up and say, “I’M GAY!” in all bold caps for it to be evident,” he said. “For my purposes, that’s bad writing. That’s a character stating something that’s not impacting the story.”

But in the case of Wonder Woman, he said, her queer identity was important to the narrative because Themyscira was represented as paradise, and with that came diversity.

“It has to be an inclusive and accepting society, for a number of reasons — paradise being one of them.”

Wonder Woman’s sexual identity was as such representative of her character in a way that it was not for other superheroes, said Rucka: “[Batman] doesn’t spend his days thinking about how best can he understand his fellow man.”

But as much as he believed that characters’ sexual expression had to be “germane to the story”, Rucka said DC Comics was concerned with issues of representation and diversity.

“Nobody at DC has ever said, “She’s gotta be straight.” Nobody. Ever. They’ve never blinked at this.”

He added he was surprised that Wonder Woman’s bisexuality was still under question when it was hinted at in some instalments of her story.

Making it any more explicit meant “writing a polemic, not a story”.

“I don’t know how much clearer I can make it! ...

“It doesn’t matter if I say, “Yes, she’s queer.” Or “No, she’s not queer.” It matters what you get out of the book. Can you find it? Is it there? Is it on the page in action or in deed? Then, there’s your answer.”

A standalone movie about the female superhero, directed by Patty Jenkins, is set for release in the US and UK on 2 June 2017.

This first trailer for the film introduces Princess Diana of Themyscira as she fights for peace during the first world war.

Major key alert: DJ Khaled’s writing a book. 

The Keys, the DJ’s first book, is being released through Crown Archetype Nov. 22. The music producer and social media mogul is bringing his inspirational words and wisdom to readers by sharing his philosophy for success and discussing the meaning of his popular catchphrases, such as “another one” and “bless up.”

“THEY tried to hide the keys from me when I was coming up,” Khaled said in a statement. “Now I’ve mastered the keys and I want to let everybody know that these are keys from my perspective. This book will help you follow your vision as long as you have passion, dedication, blood, sweat, and tears, and especially ignore when THEY try to bring you down. Major Key, I wish I had this book when I was coming up. This my passion, pain, success, blessing, and more wins! We the best!”

It has been quite the year for Khaled: He opened for Beyoncé on her hugely successful Formation World Tour, his ninth studio album debuted at No. 1, and he became a social media star due to his popular Snapchat account, where he hands out the “keys to success.”

Decades ago, the comic industry used to treat its writers and artists like replaceable cogs in a machine. This was never really true to begin with (and the families of creators like Jack Kirby and Bill Finger have recently won legal victories forcing Marvel and DC to acknowledge their work), but thankfully, today the works of individual comic creators are much more visible and recognized. Ahead of San Diego Comic-Con a few months back, Comixology launched a line of trading cards featuring comic creators like Hellboy’s Mike Mignola and Ms. Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson. Now they’re doing it again, for the upcoming New York Comic Con. 

The new batch includes everyone from Neil Gaiman to U.S. Congressman John Lewis (who just finished a Civil Rights Movement-themed graphic novel series called March alongside collaborators Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell), alongside two “rookie” cards for recent first-time comic writers Chuck Palahniuk and Margaret Atwood. 

“Sequels need to be bigger and bolder than the original so we’ve upped the ante for New York Comic Con,” Comixology co-founder and CEO David Steinberger told EW in a statement. “Series 2 has more cards, including a card showcasing the all-ages comics creative team of Art Baltazar and Franco and a card spotlighting one of my personal favorite graphic novels of all time, March. Whether the cards are self-portraits, like Jim Cheung’s, or throwback photos like Cliff Chiang’s, they celebrate the unbridled creativity of the writers and artists who create comics.”

The new cards will be available at designated times at Comixology’s Artist Alley booth at New York Comic Con, and some will be given away at Comixology’s two panels during the convention. Check out the full roster above. 

A slice of “racy” agricultural correspondence from George Washington written a few years before he became the first president of the US and dealing with a “she ass” has gone up for sale.

The 1786 letter was written by Washington from his family estate, Mount Vernon, to the Maryland politician and lawyer Richard Sprigg. Sprigg had sent his female donkey, or “she ass”, to Mount Vernon for breeding purposes, and Washington writes to say that “I feel myself obliged by your polite offer of the first fruit of your jenny [female donkey].”

“Though in appearance quite unequal to the match, yet, like a true female, she was not to be terrified at the disproportional size of her paramour; and having renewed the conflict twice or thrice it is to be hoped the issue will be favourable,” writes Washington, who would take his oath of office as president three years later, in 1789.

Bookseller William Reese has put the letter up for sale on online marketplace Abebooks for $35,000 (£26,000), saying that it reveals “a slightly racy side to his character”. “This missive is recorded by the Washington Papers, though with the date in error by one day,” writes Reese in his description of the letter, which he says is in very good condition. “Since then, the address leaf and Mrs Sprigg’s name have been effaced from the document. A rather racy bit of agricultural correspondence by Washington.”

Abebooks’s Richard Davies pointed to “Washington’s cheeky remarks about his donkey’s disproportional size” in the letter, as well as his “tidy” handwriting, and his use of abbreviation - the letter ends: “I am Dr. Sir Yr. most ob. serv.”

Reese said that the content of a letter has an effect on its price. “The subject matter of a letter matters a great deal,” he told Abebooks. “According to the Washington papers project, he wrote more than 30,000 letters in his life, and those on the market have sold from the thousands of dollars up to nearly $1m – the difference being the content.”

Emily Blunt, the actor who stars in the film adaptation of The Girl on the Train, has called for greater compassion when it comes to a woman’s choice – or lack thereof – to have a family.

Speaking in London on Wednesday, Blunt, 33, said: “I think we all need to be much kinder to each other, whether you’re a man or a woman.” Expanding on comments given at the world premiere on Tuesday about a potential competitiveness between women, Blunt added:

“There is a tendency in women towards being a bit judgmental of each other, particularly in the domestic environment. Whether you can ‘Keep a man’ – a phrase which I hate – or whether you breastfeed or don’t, whether you want to have children or you don’t, whether you can have children.

“Women are sometimes made to feel to be rather defensive about their decisions,” continued Blunt, “and I don’t think that’s right. Nobody knows the ins and outs of decisions and we can’t be too harsh about them.”

In the film, Blunt plays Rachel, a recently divorced, unemployed alcoholic. The role appealed, she said, because it was so repellent.

“It’s so unusual to have your lead protagonist be female and a blackout drunk,” she said. “Women are often required to be an ideal of some description: pretty or likeable or witty. But with this character you feel you just don’t want to breathe the same air as her. And that sort of toxic persona, physically and mentally, I’d never explored before.”

Rachel’s drinking begins as a response to a failed round of IVF treatment with her then-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), who is now happily remarried and whose wife (Rebecca Ferguson) has given birth.

Rachel is fixated on the couple and, while travelling home from New York on a commuter train – the action is relocated from the London of the novel – she witnesses disturbing developments in the relationship of Tom’s near neighbours, who are themselves grappling with the possibility of having a child.

Author Paula Hawkins, whose novel has sold over 11m copies since its publication in January 2015, said her starting point had been trying to tackle the impact of infertility, which some of her friends had experienced.

Speaking of all three female lead characters, Hawkins said: “These women are at an age when questions about motherhood are pushed to the fore – by your family, by the media – and incredibly private decisions seem to become public property.”

Blunt, who was three months pregnant with her second daughter at the time of filming, downplayed the challenges she experiences as a working mother, saying she does not envy those who are required to return to work for financial reasons, or whose jobs do not involve the possibility of extended periods of leave.

“My sister is a literary agent,” said Blunt, “and she wakes up to 800-1,000 emails a day, and she has a young boy who’s not even two. And so when she decided to go back to work it was a massive decision. Whereas I [was] rather fortunate.”

Continued Blunt: “I think having children has been wonderful in that it cracks your heart open in so many ways. I’m sure I can access a lot more since becoming a mother as an actor. But truly it makes me very specific about what I choose to do and when I work.”

George RR Martin has hailed “an amazing next step in the world of books” as he announced publication of a new digital edition of A Game of Thrones, featuring “a world of additional content” and an extract from the forthcoming sixth novel in his bestselling Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter.

A Game of Thrones: Enhanced Edition was released on Thursday on Apple’s iBooks to mark the 20th anniversary of the epic fantasy novel’s first publication. It offers “a world of additional content”, said its publisher HarperCollins, ranging from interactive character maps to detailed annotations, character journeys and timelines, family trees and and audio clips.

It includes an extract from The Winds of Winter. HarperCollins said the excerpt had been briefly published on Martin’s website, but was now available only in the new enhanced editions.

“We’re now entering a new period in the history of publishing,” said Martin, announcing the new edition. “The digital book gives readers the ability to experience all this rich secondary material that had not been possible before. These enhanced editions, available only on iBooks, include sigils and family trees and glossaries. Anything that confuses you, anything you want to know more about, it’s right there at your fingertips. It’s an amazing next step in the world of books.”

The enhanced digital edition of the second novel in the series, A Clash of Kings, is scheduled for 27 October, while book three, A Storm of Swords is due on 15 December. The fourth and fifth books, A Feast for Crows and A Dance of Dragons will follow in February and March 2017.

A HarperCollins spokesperson remained tight-lipped about a publication date for The Winds of Winter, saying only: “As yet nothing has been finalised regarding the publication … but when the book is ready, it will be announced through George’s website.”

In January, Martin revealed that he had not yet finished the novel, and that it would not be released before HBO aired the sixth season of its hit adaptation of his narrative. “Yes, there’s a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters … But there’s also a lot still left to write. I am months away still … and that’s if the writing goes well,” Martin said at the time.

Alongside familiar entertainment royalty – JK Rowling, Stephen King and George RR Martin – a new report from the Hollywood Reporter calculates that EL James, Paula Hawkins and Patrick Ness have become three of the most powerful writers in Hollywood.

The magazine’s 25-strong list of authors is topped by Harry Potter author Rowling, who wrote the screenplay for the forthcoming film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them, and has television series based on both her Cormoran Strike thrillers and her first adult novel The Casual Vacancy coming up, as well as the sellout play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

King comes in second place, with the magazine citing him as Hollywood’s most adapted author ever and highlighting the February release of the film adaptation of his Dark Tower fantasy series, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, which will also have a companion TV series.

Martin, who told the magazine that his Game of Thrones series “might need a feature to tie things up, something with a feature budget, like $100m (£76m) for two hours. Those dragons get real big, you know”, is in fourth spot – behind James Patterson in third. Patterson is the highest-paid author in the world, earning $95m in 2015 alone.

Fifty Shades of Grey author James comes in in fifth place. The trailer for the film adaptation of James’s novel Fifty Shades Darker received 114m views on the day of its release, and her telling of the same story from Christian Grey’s perspective – titled Grey – was the second bestselling book of last year. James, a producer on the films, told the magazine that the success of her erotic writing should be “a wake-up call to film-makers that there is a vibrant, fervent community of women that is underserved by Hollywood at the moment when it comes to commercial, sexy love stories.”

Romantic fiction writer Nicholas Sparks, formerly a stalwart of the Hollywood Reporter’s list, fails to make the top 25 this year. Instead, English writer Neil Gaiman comes in ninth, cited for the forthcoming TV adaptations of Good Omens, the novel he co-wrote with the late Terry Pratchett, and of his novel American Gods. Canadian author Margaret Atwood is in 16th place, with TV adaptations of her novels The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace coming up.

Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, is new to the list in 19th place, while Room author Emma Donoghue is in 22nd, and Ness in 24th. Ness’s film adaptation of his novel A Monster Calls is out in December.

Howie Sanders, UTA partner and co-head of the book department, told the Hollywood Reporter that “the demand for creators and underlying material has never been stronger” in Hollywood.

“Hollywood is rife with jokes about writers – and the punchline of all of them is how powerless they are,” said the magazine. “But as this list of the 25 most influential authors in entertainment proves, no one in the industry is laughing any more.”

David Mamet is to take charge of a big-screen transfer of his 1988 Hollywood satire Speed-the-Plow. According to Deadline, Mamet – whose last movie as director was little-seen drama Redbelt (2008) – has taken over from Michael Polish as director of the project.

The play, whose original Broadway cast included Joe Mantegna and Madonna, focuses on the competition between a studio chief and his colleague to go to bed with a new secretary. Lindsay Lohan featured in a 2014 London revival, while Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum were in a 2008 Old Vic production.

An adaptation of Mamet’s play Blackbird is in the works too, and the writer also took the reins on the 2014 HBO mini-series about the trial of Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren. His most successful movie to date was 2001’s Heist, starring Gene Hackman and Danny DeVito.

Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich has been longlisted for the UK’s most prestigious award for nonfiction writing for her collage of voices from the collapsing USSR, Second-Hand Time.

Alexievich won the Nobel prize for literature in 2015 for her “polyphonic writings”, praised as a “monument to suffering and courage in our time” by the Swedish Academy. She is one of 10 writers, chosen from more than 180 submissions, to make the longlist for the £30,000 Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction.

Formerly known as the Samuel Johnson prize, the award is open to books published in English by writers of any nationality, and has been won in the past by books covering a wide variety of subjects, from Helen Macdonald’s memoir about grief and falconry, H Is for Hawk, to Steve Silberman’s study of autism, Neurotribes.

Published by small independent press Fitzcarraldo Editions, the Belarusian journalist’s Second-Hand Time collects Alexievich’s interviews conducted between 1991 and 2012, documenting the collapse of the USSR in what the Swedish Academy called “a new kind of literary genre”.

“I don’t ask people about socialism, I ask about love, jealousy, childhood, old age. Music, dances, hairstyles. The myriad sundry details of a vanished way of life. This is the only way to chase the catastrophe into the framework of the mundane and attempt to tell a story. Try to figure things out,” Alexievich writes, in Bela Shayevich’s translation.

Alexievich’s title was chosen by a judging panel chaired by Stephanie Flanders alongside an eclectic list of contenders ranging from history to popular science. Charles Foster makes the cut for Being a Beast, in which the author experiments with living life as a badger, urban fox and otter, while Frances Wilson was picked for a more traditional slice of nonfiction, her life of Thomas De Quincey, Guilty Thing.

The award-winning Libyan novelist Hisham Matar makes the longlist with The Return, a memoir about going back to the country two decades after his father was kidnapped in Egypt and taken to prison in Libya, never to be seen by his family again. American author Margo Jefferson is also chosen for a piece of autobiography – a memoir of her childhood among Chicago’s black elite, Negroland.

Observer art critic Laura Cumming is longlisted for The Vanishing Man, which examines the life of painter Diego Velázquez alongside the tale of a Victorian bookseller obsessed with him, while Simon Ings’s Stalin and the Scientists tells the secret history of Soviet science, and Ben Judah was picked for his look at life in the UK’s capital city through a series of portraits of its immigrant population, This Is London.

Siddhartha Mukherjee’s history of genetics The Gene is woven through with the author’s family story, while lawyer Philippe Sands also weaves his family history into an exploration of the origins of international law, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg trial, East West Street.

Flanders, the former BBC economics editor, said that each of the longlisted titles “takes you on a journey that is as engrossing and imaginative as any novel”.

“They aim high, and deliver. I am not looking forward to having to choose between them,” said Flanders, who was joined on the judging panel by the writers Philip Ball and Sophie Ratcliffe, the Financial Times’s Jonathan Derbyshire and Rohan Silva, co-founder of the social enterprise Second Home. The panel will announce their shortlist on 17 October, with the winner unveiled on 15 November.

The 2016 Baillie Gifford prize longlist:

• Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Bela Shayevich (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• The Vanishing Man by Laura Cumming (Chatto & Windus)
• Being a Beast by Charles Foster (Profile Books)
• Stalin and the Scientists by Simon Ings (Faber & Faber)
• Negroland: A Memoir by Margo Jefferson (Granta Books)
• This Is London by Ben Judah (Picador)
• The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar (Viking)
• The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Bodley Head)
• East West Street by Philippe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincey by Frances Wilson (Bloomsbury)

Emily Blunt has been describing the “mummy cult” that she believes leads to cruelty between women. In The Girl on the Train, Blunt stars as a recent divorcee and alcoholic, Rachel Watson, who is infatuated by the seemingly perfect couple she sees daily through her train window.

Rachel has been through fertility treatment and is in mourning for the pregnancy that never happened, while Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett) – one half of that perfect couple – does not want a baby at all.

Speaking at the world premiere in London’s Leicester Square, Blunt said: “I think there is a huge societal pressure on women when it comes to motherhood, this sort of mummy cult that goes on. And I think it sort of makes women feel that they have to be a bit defensive about the choices that they make, whether they want to be a mother, whether they don’t, whether they want to breastfeed, whether they don’t. I could go on and on.

“In the domestic world, I think it’s when women can be a bit cruel about each other, more so than any other environment. And I think this film really captures that.”

The 33-year-old, who hit the red carpet in a colourful and ornate gown, said she was braced for “some resistance” to her version of the character – as the movie is adapted from the popular bestseller by Paula Hawkins.

“I think any time a character or certainly a book is beloved, you’re going to be met with some resistance to whoever is cast or whoever is doing it,” she said. “But at the same time, all I could think of is that it’s going to have to be my version of her whether people like it or not. Once we started filming it didn’t enter my mind that much.”

Responding to critics who said she was too pretty to play the character of Rachel, she said: “I think people should see the film before they decide if they think I look pretty or not.”

In the film Rachel is caught up in the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Megan after she glimpses something shocking from the window of her commuter train. Blunt was joined on the red carpet by co-stars Luke Evans, Rebecca Ferguson and Bennett, as well as novelist Hawkins and director Tate Taylor.

• The Girl on the Train will be released in UK cinemas on 5 October.
  

Dan Brown’s Origin, the fifth book in the Robert Langdon series, will be released Sept. 27, 2017, Knopf Doubleday announced Wednesday.

According to a press release, Origin “thrusts Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon into the dangerous intersection of humankind’s two most enduring questions, and the earth-shaking discovery that will answer them.” The previous books in the series are Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code,The Lost Symbol, and Inferno. The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons were made into films starring Tom Hanks, and Inferno — also starring Hanks — arrives in theaters Oct. 14.

The book will also be available as an ebook and an audiobook. 

Magicians trilogy author Lev Grossman will publish a new book set in Camelot titled The Bright Sword, the AP confirmed Wednesday. 

The Bright Sword is a new take on the legend of Camelot: It picks up after the death of King Arthur, Lancelot, and Galahad and the fall of Camelot, and the knights that survive are minor characters from the Camelot legend. They form a ragtag band with Merlin’s rebellious apprentice and a promising young knight to put the kingdom back together.

The titles in Grossman’s best-selling Magicians series are The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land. The series was made into a Syfy show, The Magicians, in 2015.

Viking will publish the book, which doesn’t yet have a release date.

A little over a month before the five-year anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death, the teen’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, will release a book celebrating the life and legacy of their son, EW has confirmed.

Rest in Power: The Enduring Legacy of Trayvon Martin is set to hit shelves Jan. 31, 2017. According to a press release, the book will “offer the true inside story of their son’s life and struggles, his tragic death, and the transformative movement for justice and healing that grew from that tragedy.” Martin and Fulton signed a book deal with Random House’s One World division, an imprint spearheaded by editor Christopher Jackson.

Martin, a 17-year-old high school student, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman on the evening of Feb. 26, 2012 following an altercation within a gated community in Sanford, Florida. Initially, Zimmerman was not charged with a crime; after the case drew national media attention, however, the then-28-year-old was tried for second degree murder, though he was later acquitted. Because of Florida’s controversial stand your ground law, prosecutors couldn’t oppose Zimmerman’s claims he shot Martin in self-defense.

“It first brings Trayvon back to life as the full, three-dimensional, complex kid he was, through his parents’ eyes,” Jackson, speaking about the book, told The Hollywood Reporter. “And then to the dark and confusing days following his death, which slowly transform into the blossoming of a powerful, historic movement for change and healing that we’re still watching unfold five years later. Everyone who’s been reading the manuscript is in tears by the second chapter.”

Following Martin’s death, his parents established The Trayvon Martin Foundation, a “social justice organization committed to ending senseless gun violence” and “strengthening families through holistic support.” Fulton has since made several appearances at public events to support the foundation’s causes. Most recently, she spoke at July’s Democratic National Convention, and later attended the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards in August as a guest of Beyoncé, who also featured Fulton in her Lemonade visual album earlier this year.

Watch Fulton speak at the Democratic National Convention below. 

David Cameron is to base his forthcoming memoirs on a frank and contemporaneous audio diary of his time as prime minister, according to a report.

He recorded 53 hours of conversations with Daniel Finkelstein, the Times columnist and former Conservative adviser who is a close friend of Cameron, and who was made a peer in 2013, Finkelstein’s newspaper said.

The recordings were often made weekly, when the pair met with no others present, sometimes for lunch but usually in the evening at the prime minister’s Downing Street flat.

The chats reportedly covered domestic and international affairs, the way government operated and Cameron’s views of foreign leaders, with Finkelstein pressing Cameron for details he might otherwise later forget.

The conversations were Finkelstein’s idea, the Times said, and based on The Clinton Tapes, which featured recorded interviews and chats with Bill Clinton by the US historian and author Taylor Branch, a friend of Clinton.

Cameron’s audio memories were recorded on the slightly outdated media of the MiniDisc, the report said, supposedly because the technology is seen as almost impossible to hack into. Cameron kept the discs himself.

The interviews reportedly span virtually the entire period of Cameron’s prime ministership, from soon after the 2010 election until just before his resignation after the EU referendum.

The Times said Cameron is “calm and reasonable” in the recordings, adding: “He did not get angry about events but could at times be frank about the individuals with whom he was dealing.”

Even before he decided to step down as an MP last week, Cameron was reported to be planning a quiet period in politics so he could concentrate on writing his memoirs, with publishers invited to submit bids based on a synopsis.

According to one report, Cameron is expected to receive an advance of about £1.5m for the book, notably less than that paid to Tony Blair for his autobiography, A Journey, in part because of Cameron’s lower profile in the US.

“I don’t want to be the first person to mention the name,” said the writer Moustafa Bayoumi as he brought up Donald Trump during the Terror, Threats and Fear panel at the Brooklyn book festival on Sunday, attributing the resurgence of anti-Muslim fringe groups to the rise of the Republican candidate. In this context, he said, he preferred the term “Trumpism, rather than Trump”.

Bayoumi, author of This Muslim American Life, shared the panel with Amitava Kumar, author of A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, and Masha Gessen, whose book The Brothers, about the Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, provided the subject matter for much of the talk.

“It’s impossible to predict the roots of an act of violence,” said Gessen, as the panelists questioned the value of a “theatre of protection” if they impeded personal liberties and spoke of an “economy of terror”, in which informants and terror suspects with “no other recourse to wealth” sought to transcend their financial destinies. Easy solutions were not offered, but a throwaway comment by Gessen seemed to point towards a troubling universal cause. “Nobody is going to blow people up if they’ve had a great life,” she said.

Bayoumi would have been pleased to learn that he was neither the first to mention Trump, nor the first to wish he didn’t have to. During the earlier, Nation-hosted panel The Whole World is Watching, journalist Sarah Jaffe lamented the things “going on in the world that we don’t see, because we’re busy hanging on every word Trump says”. Meanwhile, Mychal Denzel Smith noted that for Trump’s supporters, “democracy is in full force”, while the left wing of US politics had “seen what happened on the right and panicked back to the centre”. Still, the Nation’s Sarah Leonard offered hope to despondent Bernie fans. “These movements come in waves, they cascade,” she said, “There will be others [after Bernie Sanders], don’t panic.”

Panic was hardly in the air. But in the context of the looming election, it is no surprise that the festival’s speakers described an America that is riddled with anxieties. These ranged from the collective, with issues like war, recession and clashing communities stirring up insecurities, guilt and fear, to the personal. In one panel, American Angst and Anxiety, Emma Straub covered teenage angst – “the purest angst of all” – with a reading from her novel Modern Lovers, in which Ruby, “a black Jew with lesbian moms”, rages against her situation with considerable solipsism. Elsewhere in the book, she told us, a middle-aged couple’s angst stemmed from unfulfilled creative ambition, though they lived a life with “all the trappings of success”.

This talk of an artist’s ambition contrasted with Helen Ellis’s confession that, despite critical acclaim for her story collection The American Housewife, she had no desire to be considered a writer. Instead, she said, she channeled her daily experience of a housewife’s ennui into her characters, trapping them in “gilded cages” in which they could entertain themselves with mischief. These perspectives led the charge for the middle-class New York experience, with its accompanying existential niggles, while a panel led by the podcast Lit Up’s Angela Ledgerwood dug deeper into family life, as Gayle Forman described a mother’s decision, in her novel Leave Me, to break the ultimate taboo and abandon her family.

Ledgerwood’s panel guests included Ali Eteraz, whose Native Believer returned my mind to a prevailing theme of the day – the Muslim experience in America. In Native Believer, M is a secular Muslim who is fired from his job for nebulous reasons, which we suspect are related to his heritage. Despite his own belief that he is living in “post-racial America”, M is unable to escape from prejudices formed without his participation, in part due to the ongoing war on terror.

This is an experience that came up repeatedly from other sources in panels throughout the day. The children’s writer, Jeanette Winters, spoke about calls to ban her book The Library of Basra in Florida schools because of its depiction of a child praying to Allah, and its inclusion of the phrase “inshallah”. The transformation of individuals to faceless symbols during the 15 years since September 11 was also encapsulated poignantly in a metaphor by the artist Molly Crabapple, who spoke about her experiences drawing prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. “They have been turned into orange jumpsuits,” she said, “who can be attached to whoever the US is currently at war with.”

The festival took place less than 24 hours after Saturday’s explosion in Chelsea, and before any details emerged of what it was. Although it was perfunctorily raised at the start of the Terror, Threats and Fear panel, the explosion was a non-issue elsewhere. That was a testament to the fabled resilience of New Yorkers and to the unwillingness of the festival’s attendees and performers to jump to quick conclusions. Instead, they focused on a shared love of words and discourse.

Nowhere was the powerful draw of literature more visible than in the two-block queue around the St Francis College Auditorium, ahead of a highly anticipated conversation with Margaret Atwood. Over the course of an hour, the beloved author of The Handmaid’s Tale and the MaddAddam trilogy entertained her fans. She also discussed her latest work, a graphic novel called Angel Catbird, which features a superhero character with an “identity crisis”, along with helpful tips on how to look after your cat.

“There’s a lot of cat puns in this book, I apologise,” said Atwood, who seems to have a permanent twinkle in her eye.

Atwood’s final thought was with the Future Library, the public art project to which she has contributed a story, to be read for the first time in 2114. There is an inherent optimism coded into this project, as in her answer to a question, from founder Katie Paterson, about artistic forms she has yet to try: “Maybe there is some medium that is yet uninvented that I will explore.” For the worries of the near future, however, she had a simple solution. “Canada is not big enough to come to the rescue,” she said, “But you’re all welcome. We’ll set up cots.”

Dan Brown’s Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon will dust off his tweed jacket and charcoal turtleneck and throw himself into another “earth-shaking” mystery in the bestselling author’s forthcoming novel Origin, his publishers announced on Wednesday.

Out on 26 September 2017, Origin follows Brown’s other Langdon thrillers: The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, The Lost Symbol and Inferno. It will be written, said his publishers, in keeping with Brown’s “trademark style” and sees the author interweaving “codes, science, religion, history, art and architecture”.

“Origin thrusts Harvard symbologist Langdon into the dangerous intersection of humankind’s two most enduring questions, and the earth-shaking discovery that will answer them,” said his publishers Doubleday in the US and Transworld in the UK, in a note about the novel’s plot that is as cryptic as some of the mysteries Langdon has solved in the past.

According to Brown’s publishers, there are more than 200m copies of his books in print worldwide. The Bookseller said that Brown has sold 16m print books in the UK, with The Da Vinci Code alone racking up sales of 4.5m copies. The most recent Langdon title, 2013’s Inferno, sold more than 1.6m copies in the UK, with combined hardback and paperback sales. A film adaptation of Inferno, starring Tom Hanks as Langdon, is due out shortly.

“Over the past 15 years, it has been an utter privilege to publish Dan Brown’s unique blend of electrifying storytelling, historical reinterpretation and genius code-making,” said the author’s long-term UK editor Bill Scott-Kerr at Transworld. “The fact that there is to be another instalment in this record-breaking run of books will be hugely exciting to his millions of fans around the world and gives us in the publishing world another extraordinary event to look forward to next year.”

Fiction buyer at Waterstones, Chris White said: “EL James, Harper Lee and JK Rowling have all released new books over the course of the last year so I guess it was inevitable that a new Dan Brown would appear soon enough to complete the quartet of megasellers. Nobody does thrills, spills and conspiracy theories like Dan Brown and the reading public’s appetite for Origin will, I’m sure, remain as keen as ever.”

Eimear McBride, who struggled for years to find a publisher for her debut novel before it went on to win a host of prizes, has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths award for her second, The Lesser Bohemians.

McBride’s stream-of-consciousness debut, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, was rejected by most of the major publishers before it found a home with small independent Galley Beggar Press almost a decade after it was written. The novel won the inaugural Goldsmiths prize in 2013, the Baileys and the Desmond Elliott. The Lesser Bohemians is McBride’s second book, this time about a young Irish girl’s relationship with an older actor in London. It was published this month by Faber & Faber.

It is one of six works of fiction, chosen from 111 submissions, in the running for the £10,000 Goldsmiths prize, which goes to “fiction at its most novel”, and to works that judges feel embody “the spirit of invention that characterises the novel genre at its best”.

McBride is up against Rachel Cusk, shortlisted for her story of a writer and her two sons moving to London, Transit, and Deborah Levy, picked for her Booker-shortlisted novel about a mother and a daughter in Spain, Hot Milk.

Just one male writer makes the shortlist: Mike McCormack, chosen for Solar Bones, set on All Souls Day in the west of Ireland just before the recession. In a Guardian review, Ian Sansom called it “exceptional indeed: an extraordinary novel by a writer not yet famous but surely destined to be acclaimed by anyone who believes that the novel is not dead and that novelists are not merely lit-fest fodder for the metropolitan middle classes”.

Solar Bones, published by Tramp Press, is one of three novels on the shortlist from tiny independent publishers. Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, about an ageing Nigerian woman in San Francisco whose independence is curtailed by a fall, is published by Cassava Republic, while Anakana Schofield’s Martin John, detailing the life of an eccentric, sinister loner, is published by And Other Stories.

Chair of judges Blake Morrison, professor of creative and life writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, said that the list was arrived at by him and his fellow judges, the writers Bernardine Evaristo, Erica Wagner and Joanna Walsh, “without rancour or compromise”, and “demonstrates the healthy state of British and Irish fiction today”.

“Innovative novels used to suffer from the stigma of ‘difficulty’ but one thing we’ve learned, since the prize was launched four years ago, is what a large and responsive readership they reach,” Morrison said.

Previously won by Ali Smith and Kevin Barry as well as McBride, the prize was established in 2013 in association with the New Statesman “to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form”, and is open to works by authors from the UK and the Republic of Ireland. This year’s winner will be announced on 9 November.

An “ecological love story” is not a common genre, but this is how Susie Greenhill, winner of this year’s Richell prize, sees her novel The Clinking.

Greenhill, who was also longlisted for last year’s Richell prize, stood out among 428 entries in the second year of the award, which is offered to Australian writers who have not yet published a book.

A partnership between Guardian Australia, the Emerging writers’ festival and Hachette Australia, the prize is judged blind and includes $10,000 in prize money, a mentorship and a publication option with Hachette.

Michaela McGuire, a judge of the prize and the director of the Emerging writers’ festival, described Greenhill’s writing as “electric, and profoundly affecting”.

The Clinking explores themes of extinction, grief and interconnection against the backdrop of a warming climate, through the eyes of a scientist watching “the world he loves and knows intimately disappearing around him”.

Greenhill told Guardian Australia: “I feel like there are a lot of voices that don’t get heard adequately and right now one of those is the natural world.”

Greenhill, 43, from Randalls Bay in Tasmania, said she didn’t start writing seriously until her mid 30s. While her writing skills were honed during a period of extensive travel in which she wrote copious letters to family and friends, the real catalyst was an experience during a creative writing workshop.

“I read a piece to the people in the workshop and it just felt like I’d communicated for the first time,” she said. “That was quite a pivotal moment, so I decided to explore what would happen if I started finishing pieces and sending them out.”

Her first published work was in the Tasmanian literary journal, Island. She credits the Tasmanian literary community, particularly emerging writers and editors, with key support during the early stages of her writing career.

Greenhill recently completed her PhD at Edith Cowan University in which she explored similar environmental themes through a collection of short stories. She says the “financial breathing space” provided by the award will be immensely helpful, but is still very much surprised by her win.

“It’s a beautiful opportunity,” Greenhill said, accepting the award. “I hope I can create something that would make [Matt Richell] proud. I am totally overwhelmed.”

Also making the shortlist for this year’s prize were Andrea Baldwin’s The Illusion of Islands, which examines a family’s attempt to save the loggerhead turtle from extinction; Emma Doolan’s psychological thriller Dark Tides; Sophie Overett’s story The Rabbits, about family secrets, art and loneliness; and Susie Thatcher’s literary mystery Gardens of Stone.

The Richell prize was initiated last year in honour of Hachette publisher Matt Richell who died unexpectedly in 2014. This year’s judges included McGuire, senior editor at Guardian Australia Lucy Clark, bookseller Karen Ferris and Hachette publisher Vanessa Radnidge.

Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo has won the 2016 Forward prize for best poetry collection, making it three years in a row that a Caribbean poet has won one of the most prestigious poetry awards in the UK and Ireland.

The prize for first collection was also awarded to a Caribbean writer, Tiphanie Yanique, who was born in the Virgin Islands.

Capildeo’s collection Measures of Expatriation, which explores ideas of belonging and home, saw off a shortlist including TS Eliot winner Alice Oswald, Ian Duhig, Choman Hardi and Denise Riley. She follows two Jamaican-born poets, Kei Miller and Claudia Rankine, who took the main prize respectively in 2014 and 2015.

Chair of the judges, Malika Booker, called Capildeo’s collection “a book you will forever be opening”.

“She is trying to articulate something quite hard to pin down and isn’t afraid to boldly take risks in language and layout,” Booker said. “It is a book that no one else could have written; it is her DNA, her stamp. Every time you open that book, you’ll find something peculiar, something exhilarating, something new, something exquisitely crafted.”

“[Measures of Expatriation] is almost like a swan – calm on top of the water, and underneath it is pedalling furiously, to create a new vocabulary in terms of the layout and language used, the lexicon it uses.”

Capildeo received the £15,000 prize at a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London on Tuesday night. She previously worked as a OED lexicographer and has an Oxford DPhil in Old Norse. She comes from a well-known Trinidadian family of politicians and writers, which includes Booker prize-winning novelist VS Naipaul.

Yanique’s first collection Wife, which has taken the £5,000 Felix Dennis prize for best first collection, is an exploration of matrimony that Booker described as “deceptively simple but [actually] complex and bold”.

“Thinking about the region, and how patriarchy is so rife there ... how Yanique examines the different facets of matrimony and how witty it was, was so exciting to us. Her titular poem Wife is a tour de force,” Booker said.

English poet and translator Sasha Dugdale was awarded the £1,000 best single poem prize for Joy, which was first published in PN Review. A “surprisingly long winner” according to Booker, Joy is written in the voice of William Blake’s newly widowed wife Catherine, and is “mesmerising, beautiful and effortless to read”.

“It shows craftsmanship, to be able to maintain and sustain an emotional intensity, a dramatic play-like poem that still left us fulfilled and satisfied,” Booker said.

Joined on the judges panel by poets George Szirtes and Liz Berry, musician Tracey Thorn and Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine, Booker said they were divided initially but the decisions were unanimous after “passionate argument” and that they were all “surprised to find two Caribbean poets and three women as winners”.

“I’m so excited and so happy about our decisions. If the shortlists this year are indicative of what is happening in British poetry, it is such an exciting place to be at the moment. All three poets to me have added something to the poetic landscape and extended some of the conversations we are having in terms of what is poetry,” she said.

With 2016 marking the 25th year of the Forward prize, an annual studentship programme was announced on Tuesday night to support young poets. This year it was awarded to Shukria Rezaei, a young poet from Afghanistan who works as a teaching assistant at Oxford Spires Academy with poet Kate Clanchy to run writing groups with refugees and disadvantaged children.

A poetry collection called 100 Prized Poems: 25 years of the Forward Books, featuring past winners Carol Ann Duffy and Don Paterson, has also been released to mark the prizes’ anniversary year.

Barry Lyga’s upcoming YA novel Bang tells the heartbreaking story a boy who accidentally shot and killed his sister when they were young, and EW can exclusively reveal the cover and an excerpt.

At the age of 4, Sebastian Cody, accidentally shot his 4-month-old sister with his father’s gun. He has lived with the guilt his whole life. Ten years later, with his best friend away for the summer, he seeks solace in his new friendship with Aneesa. But he is battling dark thoughts.

“Although Bang is not a book about gun violence or gun control, I hope it will spark conversation and make readers think about the impact guns have on our lives,” writes Alvina Ling, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Bang comes out in April 18, 2017. See below for the excerpt and cover:

Excerpt from Bang by Barry Lyga

And the thing is this: I don’t even remember doing it.

History

My sister is in the memory hole.

She has been disappeared, vanished, eliminated, eradicated. The memory hole is a conceit from a book they made us read in school, 1984. Even though the story takes place in the past, it feels very much like the present or the near future. It feels like something incipient, imminent, pervasive. Like a fog so cold it’s a thousand needles in your skin, just barely breaking the surface.

1984 is a full-body tattoo that’s about to start, and it bestowed upon me the memory hole, which swallowed my sister bodily ten years ago.

There are no photos of her in the house.

There is no scrapbook. No baby clothes or stuffed animals or bright, crocheted baby blankets.

She’s been extinguished. She’s been erased.

My sister is in the memory hole because I killed her.

I’m told it was a Tuesday. I’m told it was June and it was hot and there’d been no rain for weeks, no respite from the heat that pressed down on Brookdale. I’m told Mom was in the backyard, hanging laundry on the line, that my father was in the garage.

I’m told I leveled my father’s .38 Magnum at her as she sat in the little bouncy chair with the stuffed birds hanging overhead. I’m told she would only nap in the bouncy chair, that she loved the stuffed birds and the birdsong that the chair played for her.

I’m told it was point-blank range and that I shot her one time.

Which, really, is all it takes.

She was four months old.

I’m told.

I’m told Mom got there first, the backdoor being close to the nursery. My father arrived a few seconds later and I was on the floor, blacked out from the kick of the pistol, which knocked me across the room. I’m told Mom screamed and screamed, clawing at her own face at the sight before her. Local legend has it that my father, fearing she would gouge her own eyes out or tear her face to ribbons, deliberately punched her out cold.

I have no reason not to believe any of the things I’ve been told.

I’m told so many things.

I was a child. It was an accident. It wasn’t my fault.

I’m told.

I was four years old.

It was ten years ago and it’s June now, again, as it is every year, but it’s not a Tuesday, but it is ten years to the day, and it’s going to rain, my phone tells me. It’s going to rain.

Good.

Good.

I like the rain. I like it ferocious and I like it gentle. I like sudden showers that last the afternoon and sprinkles that don’t last the time it takes to run to the car.

Rain is clean.

It’s Sunday and the last week of school starts tomorrow, so I stare out the window and ignore my homework, and I think of lightning, and of thunder, and of the rain.

There’s no indication it’s been ten years, no sign of the morbid anniversary. Mom is no more or less morose on this day—she wears her sadness always, an unseeable, unavoidable mantle.

She goes to bed early this night, but Mom frequently goes to bed early, a glass of wine in her hand or—sometimes—a too-sweet scent drifting up from under her closed bedroom door.

Every night before bed, she seeks me out wherever in the house I happen to be and kisses the top of my head. These days, this requires that I be sitting or that she take my face in her hands and tilt my head down. Tonight is a tilting night, as I’m standing at the window.

She pecks at my hairline and says, “I love you.”

I don’t know when this ritual began. Some nights, she says it perfunctorily; others, sweetly; still others, dully. Tonight, she says it with difficulty, as though she’s a child who’s broken a neighbor’s window and has been forced by a parent to apologize.

“I’m sorry,” I want to say, but don’t. Every time my mother tells me she loves me, this is what I want to say.

That night, after dark, before the rain, I sneak out of the house. I’ve mastered this particular skill over the course of many dead nights, when the silence was too loud and the solitude too confining. Mom sleeps soundly and well and without break. I sneak out of the house, but the truth is, I could simply leave.

I ride my bike out of the neighborhood, out to where Route 27 intersects Brook Road. The night is overcast, but the streetlights and a gauzy blur of moonlight show the way. The remnants of the day’s heat and humidity linger like party guests who stubbornly refuse to get the hint.

The streets are empty, except for the occasional rumble of a big rig, dinosauring from out of the darkness back into the darkness. I sail through intersections, the traffic lights gone blinking red after midnight.

Halfway there, the rain timidly speaks up, beginning as a hanging mist. Moisture wicks by; jewels grow on my eyelashes, distorting the meager light. I wipe at them; they grow back like hydra heads.

Soon, the mist breaks, maturing into a light tattoo of soft, nearly soundless droplets. Sweat mingles, and a thread of moisture runs cold against the warm skin of the back of my neck, beneath my shirt collar and down my back. Lifting my feet from the pedals, I coast onto the shoulder, then bump and jostle onto the grass, gliding down a grade. My tires, rain-grass-slick, slip and jitter under me. I wrestle them under control almost unconsciously.

Through a stand of trees, I see it. Drifted to a halt as the grade levels, I lean my bike against an aging poplar, its branches bent, gnarled, as though arthritic and melancholy. I pick my way through an undergrowth of sticker bushes and brambles.

Above, the rain patters on the leaves.

Ahead, it crouches in the dark, a deader dark, cloaked in dirt and rust.

The old mobile home seems to tilt just slightly to the left, but this is an illusion caused by a dent in the roof and the natural slope of the land here. It is still and silent, save for the clink and ping of raindrops, audible even from here.

This is where.

This is where it will happen.

This is where I will do it.

When the time comes.

I’ve fired a gun once in my life.

I’ll do it again.

When the time comes.

Minecraft is ready to turn a new page.

The first novel in a planned series based on the blocky, freewheeling videogame is currently being written by World War Z author Max Brooks, game developer Mojang announced over the weekend.

The book is titled Minecraft: The Island and will feature a protagonist likened to a “cuboid Robinson Crusoe, but madder: a hero stranded in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar rules, learning to survive against tremendous odds.”

Launched in 2009, Minecraft is an open-world game in which players create avatars, gather materials, build tools and structures, and cope with monsters and other perils. A movie based on the game is in development at Warner Bros., with a 2019 release date.

Brooks’ other books include The Zombie Survival Guide and the graphic novel The Harlem Hellfighters. He is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, and apparently an avid Minecraft player.

“I’m very excited to be part of this new venture,” he said in the Mojang announcement. “Finally I can justify all those hours I’ve spent playing Minecraft.”

Bruce Springsteen opened the book tour for his new autobiography, Born to Run, with a meet-and-greet in Freehold, New Jersey, the singer’s hometown, on Tuesday.

A Barnes and Noble parking lot in the central Jersey town off Highway 9 (yes, the one from the songs) was temporarily transformed into something closer to a concert queue. Metal barriers corralled admirers, wristbands were handed out, fans ranging from children to the elderly waited in line, and a family atmosphere prevailed.

“I left Long Island at 5.30am this morning,” said Marci Goldfarb, a 53-year-old mother of three sons. “I have been to over 100 shows. I met him in Stockholm,” she said, adding she was first in line for that show.

On her 28th wedding anniversary, she and her husband danced onstage to the Bruce ballad I Wanna Marry You on stage as the singer looked on. She carried a folded and worn 8-by-11in photo to prove it. “As much joy as he feels playing, which is enormous from the book, we get from him playing.”

She and two friends, who had also stood in line for hours, said in unison that Springsteen shows were a “religious experience”.

“Like being in a cathedral,” said Todd Kauffman, 52, who drove from Maryland, and shares his love of Springsteen with his 17-year-old daughter.

Indeed, Springsteen’s interactions with fans inside Freehold’s Barnes and Noble recalled a papal visit. No visit lasted longer than about 10 seconds, and most were significantly shorter. More than one woman gave him a big kiss on the cheek, through which he smiled. Men gave him hardy handshakes and hugs. Fans, well, just wanted to touch him. Many welled up afterward.

Each fan received a copy of Springsteen’s new book, pre-signed, anticipation of which was heightened earlier this month when the singer revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that he had struggled with depression.

“I would wait for a week” to meet Springsteen, Kim Rapella, 45, said. “This is the only item on the bucket list.”

Springsteen is known for playing four-hour shows filled with crowd-pleasing hits, and his fans, especially those lining up in the parking lot on Tuesday, are fiercely loyal. People started listening in “’72” or in “’80”, they said. Some might have been only 10 years old when they went to their first show, thanks to a cooler older sibling. Younger fans celebrated weddings with Springsteen songs.

Susan Hogan, 63, said her son’s recent wedding had included a tribute to the singer. “They’re all Jersey boys, and we all lined up and went, ‘Tramps like us!’” she said, quoting a lyric from Born to Run, the 1975 single after which he named his new book.

Springsteen appears to reciprocate that love, having showed up more than hour early to the event.

He did not take questions from the media, and sweaty assistants shoved reporters and video journalists out the door soon after the event started. Springsteen remained, hugging fans in a black leather jacket, jeans, and motorcycle boots.

All the excitement in the parking lot and corporate book store made it easy to forget that Springsteen’s status as a major American phenomenon comes with an attendant security apparatus.

At least eight Freehold police officers patrolled the area, and officers estimated there were at least 15 black-suited private security guards patrolling the front door and exits of the bookstore. An army of media representatives, from Barnes and Noble and Bruce’s entourage, scurried in and out of the front door. At one point police threatened to arrest the Guardian for lingering too long.

Still, there was little that could dampen the joy of fans who had flown in from Israel and Alabama, driven from DC or the middle of Long Island in the dark, or who had planned a vacation around the experience.

Jodi Placek, 47, still in the roped-off area near the singer and within earshot, threw her hands in the air immediately after hugging the Boss and exclaimed of herself: “She floats away, not touching the ground!”

A biography of the 19th-century explorer Alexander von Humboldt, who has “faded from collective memory” despite being dubbed “the Shakespeare of the sciences” by his peers, has won the £25,000 prize for the best science book of the year.

Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, which lays out the life of the Prussian explorer and naturalist Humboldt, was named winner of the Royal Society Insight Investment science book prize on Monday evening by chair of judges Bill Bryson. Humboldt, who lived from 1769 to 1859, inspired scientists and writers including Jules Verne and Charles Darwin in his day. He has more things named after him than anyone who has ever lived, including an ocean current, a six-foot squid and a breed of penguin.

Bu according to the Royal Society, of which he was a foreign member, he has “faded from collective memory” in the English-speaking world today.

Bryson, a previous winner of the award, said that Wulf’s biography, which also won the Costa biography prize, was “a thrilling adventure story as much as a science book about a polymath who had an extraordinary impact on our contemporary understanding of nature”.

Other contenders for this year’s prize included Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene, Thomas Levenson’s The Hunt for Vulcan, and Tim Birkhead’s look at the bird egg, The Most Perfect Thing.

“The decisive factor for the winning book was that it excited and gripped us as judges the most,” said Bryson. “It is a book you will find yourself talking endlessly about with friends in the pub.”

“Humboldt may not be well known today but he remains very much of our time: his work tackled many of today’s big issues like climate change and biodiversity loss and the interconnectedness of nature,” said Brian Cox, the Royal Society’s professor for public engagement in science. “Moreover, he was a polymath who was curious about everything and was a superb communicator. His interdisciplinary approach puts paid to the ridiculous notion that science and the arts are separate entities. We should be taking our cues from Humboldt – be curious and be informed by science on the big issues.”

What a time to be alive for fans of the Big Important Novel. For readers not sated by such recent doorstops as A Little Life, Purity, City on Fire, and the rest, the book gods (namely, FSG) have now given us Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am, thick with 600 pages and 11 years of high expectations.

Foer’s first two novels—2003’s Everything Is Illuminated, published to raves when he was just 25, and 2005’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was adapted into a Tom Hanks movie—quickly cemented him as a literary wunderkind, a Jonathan to watch (alongside the Franzens and Lethems of the publishing world). The number of years between then and now seemed to be a sign that his third would be grand and ambitious, and, well, Here I Am is definitely both of those things. It is, at times, also pretty good—if not always enjoyable.   

All the trademarks of a Foer work are here: big ideas; unabashed earnestness; precocious children who talk, think, and read at a Foer-grade level; questions about what it means to be Jewish; and, relatedly, questions about what it means to be home. The story is personal and intimate, but stretched out on a gigantic and political canvas: The Bloch family is falling apart, and so is Israel. 

At the center is Jacob and Julia Bloch, a 40-something Washington D.C. couple whose marriage is on the brink of awkward collapse. Julia renovates homes for a living, a juicy metaphor that Foer squeezes with vigor, while Jacob is a writer who overthinks the death out of everything, including his own overthinking. His grandfather Isaac is a Holocaust survivor who’s considering killing himself. And on top of all this, an earthquake in the Middle East has caused a political crisis—and perhaps the end of Israel.

And I haven’t even mention the Blochs’ three kids and Jacob’s beloved dog. There’s a lot happening, but the book’s first section, which obsessively and intimately details the demise of the Bloch marriage, is the most personal—and most satisfying—part of the novel. Foer has a knack for making minutiae moving. His burrows deep into their domestic anguish and comes back out with captivating prose, refreshingly free of the gimmicky bells and whistles of his earlier novels. Even if you find Foer’s cloyingly clever characters and overuse of metaphors to be insufferable (and many do), the marital autopsy might keep you around. 

Then comes the rest. Israel is hit with an existential crisis, and so are Foer’s characters as their individual anxieties turn universal. Foer goes on to spend countless exhausting pages wrestling with big-picture questions about family and home and belonging, and then goes on to spend more countless exhausting pages doing it some more. The short version: Jacob uses the embattled Middle Eastern country as a proxy for his embattled family.

Early in the novel, Jacob describes “the embarrassment of trying and failing”—“an extended limb is far easier to break than a bent one,” Foer writes. Here I Am certainly has its limb extended all the way out, for better or for worse.