![Books as a Covid passport Books as a Covid passport](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/We_Are_Not_In_The_World_feature.jpg)
Books as a Covid passport
Earlier this year, my novel The Butchers won the 2021 RSL Ondaatje Prize, awarded to the book which best evokes ‘the spirit of a place’. The prize seems like a lovely thing at the best of times – I am a big believer in the transportive power of books – but this year it felt...
![On ghosts and grace On ghosts and grace](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Jenn_Ashworth_slider-290x290.jpg)
On ghosts and grace
At the outset of our email chat about her new novel Ghosted, when I tell her how deeply I connected with her story, Jenn Ashworth accepts my heartfelt praise with the comment: “It’s all I want, really, when people read my books – just to feel like they’ve been acknowledged and offered something half-useful.” It’s...
![Nowhere, or wherever you are Nowhere, or wherever you are](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Notes_Made_feature_2.jpg)
Nowhere, or wherever you are
I wanted to be a writer when I was little. There was no question of it; I knew loads of words, and it hadn’t crossed my mind that there was anything more to it than putting them together on a blank (or blank-ish) surface. I was a writer. I wasn’t prepared to wake up one...
![Jenn Ashworth: Into the dark Jenn Ashworth: Into the dark](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Jenn_Ashworth_slider-290x290.jpg)
Jenn Ashworth: Into the dark
I wouldn’t have expected Jenn Ashworth to be nervous at this stage in her career. Perhaps a couple of novels ago she might have worried that the 2010 Betty Trask prize she’d snagged for her debut A Kind of Intimacy had been beginner’s luck. But her 2011 follow-up Cold Light landed her on the BBC Culture Show’s list of the Twelve Best New...