“Hwang Jung-eun is one of the brightest stars of the new South Korean generation - she's Han Kang's favourite, and the novel we're publishing scooped the prestigious Bookseller's Award, for critically-acclaimed fiction that also has a wide popular appeal. She stands out for her focus on social minorities - her protagonists are slum inhabitants, trans women, orphans - and for the way she melds this hard-edged social critique with obliquely fantastical elements and offbeat dialogue.” WayHardSocialStarsFictionNovelFocusGenerationsElementsSouthWideDialogueAppealsMinoritiesAwardsFavouritePublishingStanding OutCritiqueTransKoreanOrphanProtagonistsSlumsJungPrestigiousBooksellersOffbeatBrightest Star Author:Deborah Smith
“While the film [Hide and seek] is a work of fiction, I know many people, not just women, who have felt the way my character feels in the film, a certain kind of invisibility. I am grateful that my parents, Bev Umehara and Russell Chang, instilled a healthy sense of self-esteem in me from an early age.” PeopleKnowsWayFeelsKindSelfCharacterAgeFilmCertainFeltParentFictionSelf EsteemHealthyGratefulEsteemSense Of SelfInvisibilityI Am GratefulHide And Seek Author:Garth Kravits
“I really like stories, so in a way it doesn't matter for me if they are real or fiction.” IfsWayRealMatterStoriesFiction Author:Volker Bertelmann
“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.” WayNeedsWritingReasonLanguagePayAttentionFictionCreativeGreaterTaughtPoetProgramUniversityCreative WritingWorkshopsFiction WritingFiction WritersHouston Author:Edward Hirsch
“Fiction writers learn about the development of metaphor, the use of rhythm, the way that language is compacted in order to express the feelings of - express their own feelings and the feelings of their characters.” WayCharacterUseFeelingsOrderLanguageFictionDevelopmentMetaphorRhythmFiction Writers Author:Edward Hirsch
“And from, you know, small ideas, bigger ideas emerge. So we're starting with suborbital space flights and we'll then go into orbital space flights and, you know, maybe one day we'll send people on a one-way voyage into the depths of space as per the science fiction trips.” PeopleKnowsWayIdeasSpaceFictionOne DayBiggerScience FictionDepthStartingFlightOne WayVoyagesMaybe One DaySpace FlightSmall Ideas Author:Richard Branson
“In a way, I see my fiction as having moved in that direction - and the characters as dealing simultaneously with their personal history and with the present in which they are trying to make their way. So that the books are simultaneously about public and interior events. And I am having a great time getting confused and crazed writing about them.” WayWritingTryingBookCharacterFictionEventsMovedConfusedInteriorsGreat TimesPersonal History Author:Frederick Busch
“I don't go out of my way to write Weird Fiction, or in any other genre. Some of my stuff easily slips into the Weird slot.” WayWritingStuffFictionMy WayGenreSlips Author:Karin Tidbeck
“I come from a nation where fantastic fiction has a very low status, unless it fits into some very specific categories or is written by already established authors. I don't by any means try to hide what I write, but the way people think in categories here is pretty extreme: it blots out discussing the actual work on its own terms. That's made me loath to talk about my own work in terms of genre, because once you get a label, it sticks and poof go a slew of potential readers and reviewers because eww, fantasy cooties.” PeopleThinkingWayWritingTryingMeanMadeNationsTermMy OwnFictionFantasyWrittenReaderFitLowsSticksExtremesFantasticLabelsGenreCategoriesDiscussingReviewersCooties Author:Karin Tidbeck
“I love telling stories, I love for someone to see something, and go, "Oh, wow, I've never thought of it that way." Because I've had those moments in my life, where I go, "Oh, my God, I've never looked or approached this topic and had that insight or had that idea come to mind," to where it changes your life, it changes the way you see certain things. I love that. I think that's such a cool thing that we get to do by sharing stories, whether they're fiction or nonfiction.” ThinkingWayMindIdeasMomentsStoriesCertainFictionInsightWowNonfictionTopicsChanging Your LifeTelling StoriesThings I LoveCool ThingsSharing Stories Author:Tyler Hoechlin
“I may be the person who put "dieselpunk" into the conversation. I have always been a reader who reads in a really broad way. I read genre writers and I read literary fiction and I read books by dead people.” PeopleWayMayPersonsBookFictionReaderConversationGenreBroadsDead People Author:Emily Barton
“[Michael] Chabon, who is himself a brash and playful and ebullient genre-bender, writes about how our idea of what constitutes literary fiction is a very narrow idea that, world-historically, evolved over the last sixty or seventy years or so - that until the rise of that kind of third-person-limited, middle-aged-white-guy-experiencing-enlightenment story as in some way the epitome of literary fiction - before that all kinds of crazy things that we would now define as belonging to genre were part of the literary canon.” WorldWayWritingYearsKindPersonsIdeasStoriesLastsGuyWhiteFictionCrazyMiddleEnlightenmentThirdsAll KindsGenreBelongingSixtySeventiesMiddle AgedCanonCrazy ThingsEpitomeWhite GuysThird PersonBrash Author:Emily Barton
“I think that people have expectations of themselves and other people that are based on these fictions that are presented to them as the way human life and relationships could be, in some sort of weird, ideal world, but they never are. So you're constantly being shown this garbage and you can't get there.” PeopleThinkingWorldWayHumansFictionExpectationsIdealsHuman LifeGarbageIdeal World Author:Charlie Kaufman
“Though I later found a career as a journalist and an essayist, fiction is my first love and I never left it, even though there was no easy way to make a living from it.” WayFirstsFoundLeftEasyFictionCareersJournalistFirst LoveEasy WayEssayists Author:Andrew Lam
“Reading my way all the way through Sherlock Holmes gave me a lifelong love for crime and detective fiction.” WayReadingFictionCrimeMy WayLifelongDetectivesHolmesDetective FictionLifelong Love Author:Stanley Bing
“As a young kid I assumed that everybody was sort of on the same wavelength as I was and then I found out in a lot of small ways that that wasn't the case. It's sort of a mixed blessing. My mind is like a puppy. It goes all over. I guess writing fiction was a way of harnessing that. I could hook a puppy up to a treadmill and get something out of it.” WayWritingMindKidsYoungFoundFictionCasesBlessingHookPuppyWriting FictionTreadmillsWavelength Author:George Saunders
“I really need to know where I'm going with fiction to write it in a way that at least I'm happy with. And I really think that a lot of fiction books end badly because terrific writers said, "I'll just figure it out" and plunge in, but have created so many problems that they are kind of impossible to solve. I mean, I'm talking really good writers do this and you can tell when they got to the end they either had to do something preposterous or they just don't really resolve things. So for fiction I spend a lot more time outlining and for humor I really don't do much of it.” ThinkingKnowsWayNeedsWritingKindMeanSaidBookEndsProblemFictionTalkingImpossibleFiguresSolveResolveMore TimeTerrificPlungeGood WritersOutlining Author:Dave Barry
“I think what's happening is, it's all - fantasy, science fiction, ghosts, trolls, whatever - finally being called, being admitted to be literature. The way it used to be, before the Realists and the bloody Modernists took over.” ThinkingWayUsedLiteratureFictionFantasyHappeningsScience FictionGhostUsed To BeBloodyRealistTroll Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
“I like to think that one of things I've done with non-fiction since the very beginning is to find new ways of telling true stories.” ThinkingWayDoneStoriesFictionNew WaysNon FictionTrue Story Author:Errol Morris
“In fact, people seem to be tired of fiction now. There are so many other ways of exploring humanity - by ethnology, psychoanalysis, and so on. It's a little boring to make up stories. So many people think that it's better to be very close to reality and to recount one's life as it is rather than to fictionalize, as they say, that is to transpose, and therefore to cheat.” PeopleThinkingWayLittlesFactsStoriesRealitySeemsHumanityFictionTiredBoringCheatExploringPsychoanalysis Author:Simone de Beauvoir
“I felt like I was a writer, and I just thought filmmaking was the best way for me to express that, because it allows me to embrace the visual world that I love. It's allows me to interact with people, to be more social than fiction or poetry, and it felt like the right way for me to tell the stories that felt pressing to me.” PeopleWorldWayStoriesSocialFeltFictionEmbraceBest WayVisualsFilmmakingRight Way Author:Lena Dunham
“In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldWayDoeIdeasDifferentAmericaYoungFictionNovelFunctionNotionEncountersPakistanWay Of Thinking Author:Mohsin Hamid
“I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.” PeopleWayShouldWritingSaidSeemsLastsProcessFictionNovelClearStudentsMinesDegreesSentencesWriting FictionProselytizing Author:John Irving
“[The Women's Room] is one of those pieces of fiction that reveals itself in a different way every time. It's incredible.” WayDifferentRoomsFictionPiecesIncrediblesDifferent Ways Author:June Diane Raphael
“I think that is one of the first things that I got clear in my mind when I began to play around with fiction, that I had to find a language and it was not in existance at the time. You have put it very well - it wasn't to be taken for granted. You had to go on and search until you found a way through the conversation of English and Igbo. The two languages stuck into each other and tried to find a way to express through one, the medium of the thoughts. That's a very exciting thing to do, a very difficult thing to do.” ThinkingWayMindFirstsWellsTwoPlayFoundLanguageDifficultFictionTakenClearGoes OnConversationExcitingStuckMediumsGrantedThings To DoDifficult ThingsTaken For GrantedExciting Things Author:Chinua Achebe
“I think I can do whatever I want with fiction, but the more documentary it is, the better it will be because that's what I'm good at. I'm good at observing people's behavior and putting these unspoken things into movie contexts in ways that other people can sometimes miss.” PeopleThinkingWayWantI CanSometimesCan DoFictionMissingBehaviorDocumentariesObservingUnspoken Author:Robert Greene
“Incidentally, I am intrigued by how many European and Latin American writers expressed their political views in the columns they routinely wrote or write in the popular press, like Saramago, Vargas Llosa, and Eco. This strikes me as one way of avoiding opinionated fiction, and allowing your imagination a broader latitude. Similarly, fiction writers from places like India and Pakistan are commonly expected to provide primers to their country's histories and present-day conflicts. But we haven't had that tradition in Anglo-America.” WayWritingCountryAmericaPoliticalImaginationViewsFictionHavensConflictTraditionIndiaPressesExpectedStrikesOne WayLatinAllowingAvoidingPakistanColumnsLatin AmericaIntriguedPresent DayFiction WritersEcoOpinionatedAmerican WriterLatitudePolitical ViewLatin AmericanIndia And Pakistan Author:Pankaj Mishra
“The power of story is potent and that's why historical fiction can be an extraordinarily significant way of teaching people logical truth propositions, moves you along, moves your emotions as well as informs your intellect.” PeopleWayWellsStoriesMovingEmotionFictionTeachingHistoricalIntellectSignificantLogicalHistorical FictionPropositionsPower Of Stories Author:Hank Hanegraaff
“As a lawyer, as a private citizen, you see a lot of injustice. You see a lot of people who should have been punished and are not, and people who were punished wrongfully are not vindicated. Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.” PeopleWayShouldBelieveHas BeensJusticeFictionRecordsCitizensShould HaveInjusticeLawyerOutcomesShould Have BeenVindicated Author:David Baldacci
“I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.” WayWritingFictionBored Author:Jonathan Lethem
“The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.” PeopleWayWritingLiteratureFictionSubjectsClimateClimate ChangeBest WayOutstandingNon Fiction Author:Ian Mcewan