![Spirits and stimulations Spirits and stimulations](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Book_of_Echoes_feature.jpg)
Spirits and stimulations
Rosanna Amaka’s The Book of Echoes is a searing debut novel about hope, redemption and the scars of history, narrated by the spirit of an enslaved African who journeys to 1980s Brixton and a sun-baked village in Nigeria, drawing together and transforming the lives of two youngsters who are struggling to hold onto their dreams....
![On finding your voice On finding your voice](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Not_Working_PB_feature.jpg)
On finding your voice
When I first started actively pursuing a writing career, I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to write: spare and beautiful books set in rural Ireland, miniature domestic tragedies with universal truths at their heart. Possibly there’d be a PWDP (Priest With Dark Past), or a WRAUA (Woman Returning After Unexplained...
![All through the night All through the night](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Abdullah_the_Cossack_Feature.jpg)
All through the night
H.M. Naqvi’s The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack draws a portrait of modern Karachi via the crumbling body and soul of a 70-year-old man who is pondering the city’s past from the viewpoint of a dilapidated family estate. His wistful daydreams of jazz clubs, cabarets, Sufi festivals and visiting Soviet officials are broken when...
![Laura Beatty: Insight and wonder Laura Beatty: Insight and wonder](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Laura_Beatty_slider-290x290.jpg)
Laura Beatty: Insight and wonder
One comes away from meeting and talking with Laura Beatty with a combined sense of awe and the closest human affinity and immediacy. She possesses a formidable mind, a very composed and elegiac conversational style that one may only call a delicately poetic oral prose. The beginning of a thought or a sentence soon acquires...
![Writing in the #MeToo era Writing in the #MeToo era](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/The_Red_Word_feature.jpg)
Writing in the #MeToo era
Shocking revelations, a barrage of headlines, rising public outrage, hashtag activism, and… fiction. My novel The Red Word has been launched at the height of the #MeToo movement, and from its first days on the market it’s been praised for being ‘timely’. How does it feel to have written such a timely novel? How has...
![A remarkable woman A remarkable woman](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Attend_feature.jpg)
A remarkable woman
As I made the final corrections to the proofs of my debut novel Attend, I was asked by my publisher whether I wanted to include a dedication. Having toyed with some names – a few people in my life I thought might fit the bill, the idea came to me that I should dedicate this...
![Be creative Be creative](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Book_of_Alexander_feature-290x290.png)
Be creative
Let’s say you would like to write a novel. You have a plot summary, gained over weeks, months, years, which has formed in your mind while you have been out walking, running, having a bath. The plot is simple and effective, and you can describe it in less than a minute. Your friends like your...
![Richard Skinner: Getting going Richard Skinner: Getting going](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Writing_a_Novel_feature_2-290x290.jpg)
Richard Skinner: Getting going
Richard Skinner is Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy and a tutor on its six-month Writing a Novel course. Working across fiction, life writing, non-fiction and poetry, his latest book is Writing a Novel: Bring Your Ideas To Life The Faber Academy Way. I fire off some questions about the book, the course...