Angela Young

LATEST ARTICLES ( 57 )

• Chaos & Creativity; and Beautiful Bookshops

  

  I dislike hate chaos. Very much. Who doesn’t? But it’s an essential state if you want to write fiction. Messiness of the mind is the sine qua non for writers. Read more

  Posted on 14 October 2017 BOOKS

• Rejection is a Rite of Passage for Writers, and the Raw Chocolate Company

  

  One of the things that a writer takes a while truly to believe (it’s taken me a while) is that rejection is part of the process: it’s necessary, inevitable and... Read more

  Posted on 14 September 2017 BOOKS

• A Very Small Trawl Through a Few Less Well-known News Sites

  

  This month – perhaps because it’s the silly season when news tends towards the frivolous because the House of Commons is in recess and us ordinary folk go on... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2017 BOOKS

• Blurt It Out and Instead of a Card

  

  I’m submitting the manuscript of my third novel to literary agents. It’s a process that requires much patience, a certain amount of luck and, most importantly,... Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2017 BOOKS

• Words on Writing, and Pass on a Poem

  

  There are hundreds of thousands of words written about writing fiction: how to write, why we write, what to do when we can’t write and on and on so that,... Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2017 BOOKS

• Auditioning to Become a WI Speaker, and ‘Born Baffled: Musings on a Writing Life’

  

  In March I auditioned to become a WI speaker. The WI, you say? Don’t they just make jam, sing Jerusalem and talk a lot? Yes to all three, but no to JUST. Read more

  Posted on 14 May 2017 BOOKS

• Spring in London, and The Kid Stays in the Picture

  

  Spring in London is an astonishing thing: blossom among the grey buildings and pavements; green and blue and pink and white making us look up at it and then at... Read more

  Posted on 14 April 2017 BOOKS

• A History of Britain in 21 Women, by Jenni Murray

  

  This is both the thing I’m writing about this month and the thing I’d love to have written, in a parallel universe where time is infinite and all things are... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2017 BOOKS

• Anselm Kiefer and Heywood Hill

  

  On the weekend we went to the Anselm Kiefer Exhibition at the White Cube in Bermondsey. It’s just closed, but if there’s any of his work anywhere near you do... Read more

  Posted on 14 February 2017 BOOKS

• John Berger, Ways of Seeing … and PEN International

  

  John Berger, who died aged 90 on January 2nd, was a critic, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and poet and well-known to many. Read more

  Posted on 14 January 2017 BOOKS

• Dare Always Dare, and Guerilla Grafters

  

  A friend pointed out to me a week or so ago that this: DARE ALWAYS DARE is written in neon above the foyer entrance to the Old Vic Theatre (no idea why I’d neve... Read more

  Posted on 14 December 2016 BOOKS

• Third Novel Delivered, and the Reith Lectures, 2016

  

  This month I delivered my third novel (working title For the Love of Life) to my agent, so now, while I do all the things I haven’t had time to do (updating my... Read more

  Posted on 14 November 2016 BOOKS

• Rose Tremain’s The Gustav Sonata and Dioni Mazaraki’s Silver Jewellery

  

  I’ve read all Rose Tremain‘s novels and I love the fact that they fail to fit neatly into any particular category (except the category of beautifully written... Read more

  Posted on 14 October 2016 BOOKS

• Theresa May, the Queen and Boris Johnson And, More Seriously, Kent Haruf

  

  A friend of mine sent me this sometime after the Brexit Bungle: The real reason Boris was appointed to the Foreign Office There’s not much else to say, is there? Read more

  Posted on 14 September 2016 BOOKS

• How Dramatic Stories Change Brain Chemistry, and NOT the Booker Prize

  

  Good strong stories, as we all know, transport us to other people’s worlds. So, when we’re reading fiction, even though we know the people we’re reading about... Read more

  Posted on 14 August 2016 BOOKS

• The UK Referendum, Brexit, and Meike Ziervogel on the Importance of Listening...

  

  On 1 July Meike Ziervogel, founder and publisher at Peirene Press, published this: Translation is Europe’s only common language. Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2016 BOOKS

• Why Readers Stop Reading; Lisa McInerney’s 2016 Bailey’s Win, and Penicillin

  

  An interesting survey on why readers stop reading: There’s more here. It’s published by Lit World Interviews (I found it on a TLC facebook post. Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2016 BOOKS

• Brainpickings and Mindset

  I’ve just discovered a website called brainpickings. I was noodling around on the internet, trying to find out something for one of my characters (what it was... Read more

  Posted on 14 May 2016 BOOKS

• Do You Want Escape Or Experience When You Read Fiction? And: from Food Desert...

  

  I found this definition of the distinction between genre and literary fiction here: The main reason for a person to read Genre Fiction is for entertainment,... Read more

  Posted on 14 April 2016 BOOKS

• Mindfulness, Fitzroy Square and Subversive (Guerilla) Gardening

  

  A few weeks ago I did an Introduction to Mindfulness day at the London Mindfulness Project (whose rooms are in the astonishingly beautiful, Georgian Fitzroy... Read more

  Posted on 14 March 2016 BOOKS