Kishani Widyaratna
@KishWidyaratna
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Book bore // Publishing Director @4thEstateBooks // she/her // opinions all my own // rt ≠ endorsement// Editor of the Year 2024
London
Joined November 2010
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I am stunned! So grateful to my authors, the
@4thEstateBooks
team, agents and trade champions.
I dedicate this to our Palestinian colleagues—writers, publishers, journalists, illustrators and academics— killed in the genocide in Gaza and who will not be forgotten. Ceasefire now
Winner of Editor of the Year, Kishani Widyaratna, collects the Nibbie live on stage!
#BritishBookAwards
#Nibbies
@KishWidyaratna
@4thEstateBooks
@HarperCollinsUK
@YMULiterary
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Being an adult is just messaging each other ‘let me know when works for you!’ back and forth at intervals until one of you finally gives up and you never see each other again
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My issue with furniture is that I cannot afford the things I love and then it is hard to forget the beautiful things I have seen.
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Me to the person who just cut in front of me on the tube platform:
‘I’m so sorry I was not your mother. If I was your mother you would have been so held...’
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I grew up in a house without many books, and parents who were not readers. My passion for reading and discovery of books was nurtured by my local library.
Reading changed my life. It is devastating that this possibility will be lost for future generations.
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I’m so excited about starting this new role as Editorial Director with the truly incredible team at
@4thestatebooks
.
I feel such gratitude to my exceptional authors and colleagues for a special few years at
@picadorbooks
. Thank you to all of them.
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Philip Pullman's language today was unconscionable. It not only further endangers these women writers, who simply correctly pointed out racism and ableism in a published book, but it also demonstrates how insiduous the wider climate of Islamophobia is in the UK.
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So grim and disappointing to see transphobic tweets in response to this wonderful Women’s Prize longlist.
Transphobia and prejudice have no place in publishing.
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My kingdom for Love Island to be on at 8pm, I beg. 😩
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I don’t know how anyone is getting anything done. I cannot look away from what is happening, even if I wanted. It is too horrifying, too real and too immediate. It calls our faith in humanity into inexorable question that demands for a ceasefire are not unanimous and unequivocal
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Hard to sum up how hugely lucky I feel at this news.
I’m ever grateful to my exceptional authors, it’s a privilege to be their editor, to my brilliant colleagues at team
@4thEstateBooks
and to many people across the industry. Excited for all that lies ahead 🧡
"Kishani brings unparalleled energy and publishing expertise to everything she does."
@KishWidyaratna
has been promoted to publishing director at
@4thEstateBooks
.
Read here:
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David Hockney and his dog Ruby in lockdown in Normandy, plus one of his new drawings
"Why are my iPad drawings seen as a respite from the news? Well, they are obviously made by the hand depicting the renewal that is the spring in this part of the world."
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She's not wearing a
#burkini
. France's 'moral' police targeted her for her skin colour not her clothes.
#BurkiniBan
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I was utterly captivated by Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters. It’s as irresistible and brilliant as you’ve heard it is. I can’t recommend it enough.
The work is the thing, not the noise. Fuck the noise.
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I am surprised and delighted to be included in
@BritishVogue
's 25 most influential women of 2022, alongside some amazing women.
Grateful to our brilliant authors and the many talented people I’m lucky to work with at
@4thEstateBooks
!
From politicians to musicians, designers to campaigners, these are the incredible women who make up this year’s Vogue 25.
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My last acquisition for
@picadorbooks
is one I am most proud of, bringing one of my favourite writers, the incredible Jamaica Kincaid back to
@picadorbooks
in a 10 book deal
I look forward to
@paulmartinovic
and all
@picadorbooks
taking her books to the readership they deserve🖤
.
@picadorbooks
has won a four-way auction for 10 books from Jamaica Kincaid, hailed by the publisher as “one of our greatest living writers”! Find out more about the titles here:
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She’s an instant UK bestseller!
Huge congrats to the
@ravenleilani
and her incredible debut novel LUSTER which enters
@thesundaytimes
hardback fiction top ten at no.5!
Thanks to *everyone* who has supported the book and congrats to all at
@picadorbooks
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First day at
@4thEstateBooks
today! My first time starting a new job in slippers but there you go.
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This is unconscionable. The Govt delayed the release of the Public Health England report on disproportionate BAME deaths from COVID-19 because they were worried about BLM protests and backlash.
How little they value the lives that the report is meant to help save.
Exc
BAME report delayed amid fears its contents could stoke racial tensions
By
@inzyrashid
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I have been schooled to hate them but I'll admit it, I love exclamation marks. Deployed correctly they can uncannily transform a sentence or a sentiment, and they're particularly excellent at conveying exhalation or a 'spilling over'. I can't help but feel tenderly towards them.
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🚨 PLOT TWIST 🚨
Yesterday a mystery donor pledged a staggering £250,000 to the hardship fund for bookshop workers affected by Covid crisis and economic downturn across the UK and Ireland!
Taking our total raised with
@babooksellers
for
@BTBSCharity
to an incredible £380,000 😮
.
@gyllzd
,
@KishWidyaratna
&
@ZeljkaMarosevic
's
@gofundme
to help booksellers struggling during the Covid-19 crisis has absolutely smashed its goal, racking up £380k after a mystery donor pledged an “astonishing” £250k! Find out more about the fundraiser:
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It’s finally happened, someone asked me if I had read a book that I published.
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I honestly think Anna Burns was the Booker winner we needed in this moment. 🖤
"I’ve got 30 days to declare a change in circumstance and this is one hell of a change".
The 2018 Man Booker prize winner Anna Burns discusses how she was forced to rely on benefits while writing her winning novel 'Milkman'.
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I disagree that men are discriminated against, but as Marlon James said the homogeneity of literary publishing is a problem:
largely straight, white middle class women mainly publishing writers who look or sound like them and neglecting poc, working class disabled & LGBTQI voices
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‘We are proud Jews who denounce the weaponization of Jewish identity and the memory of the Holocaust to justify what many experts in international law, including leading Holocaust scholars, have identified as a “genocide in the making.”’
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Proofs!
TIME LIVED, WITHOUT ITS FLOW
Denise Riley
A revised ed of her seminal essay on grief and time, ft a new intro by Max Porter. This peerless text succeeds in taking an unfathomable experience and rendering it in the most precise language. I recommend it with all my heart.
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While it was terrifying to see my face unmoored, floating around twitter, it was a joy to see this announcement go out. I'm proud to be a radical woc editor this industry and incredibly lucky that I'll continue to work across poetry, fiction and non-fiction at Picador.✌🏾
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Clive Allison and Margaret Busby in 1967 when they founded Allison & Busby. She became Britain’s youngest + first black woman book publisher
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My
#cookjan
resolution is to be better at batch cooking this year as I struggle to find time to cook in the week so I'm collecting up my *fave* vegan or veganisable batch recipes for inspiration:
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Proofs!
SUMMERWATER by Sarah Moss
A gripping story following twelve people cooped up with their families at an isolated, lochside holiday park, told over 24 rain-drenched hours. Beautifully told, immersive and impossible to put down, it’s a banger
Coming 20.08
@picadorbooks
🌧
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Wow, this shows complete lack of understanding of Black Lives Matter both in the US and the UK.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tells
#BBCBreakfast
it’s "a shame" the sentiment behind the Black Lives Matter movement is getting “tangled up with these organisational issues" and it’s "nonsense" to call to ‘Defund the Police’.
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Last week my mum dropped round some branches from her magnolia tree for us to enjoy it from afar. Our living room is quite warm in the sun so the flowers flew open over three days. Day 1, day 2 and day 3.
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Many women protect each another by sharing the names of men you cannot trust and who are not safe. This happens all the time, in private.
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I don’t know who needs to hear this but mimosa season is here
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Some news! I'm grateful to our Publisher Paul Baggaley for everything, to the talented and passionate team I get to work with
@picadorbooks
, and most of all to my incredible authors. I am so privileged to work with them and thank them for trusting me with their brilliant writing.
.
@picadorbooks
'
@krisjdoyle
and
@SophieHJonathan
have both been promoted to editorial director, while
@ansa_khan
and
@KishWidyaratna
are also stepping up at the
@panmacmillan
imprint:
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What I hoped my life as an editor would look like...
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This saga is one of the most distressing and disheartening I’ve ever witnessed in publishing. It reveals much about the industry and the unrelenting political agenda of our media. The personal cost for Chimene, Sunny & Monisha has been unfathomable. Pls consider them if engaging.
For the weekend:
1. Don’t click on the articles.
2. Don’t retweet them, even to criticise them.
3. Don’t link to them in any way.
4. And if you really can’t resist the above, don’t tag Sunny, Monisha and Chimene as you may unintentionally send more abuse their way.
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It's incredible that
@GeorgeThePoet
kept his composure through this interview from Emily Maitlis. Why are we still questioning black people in the UK on the legacy of slavery, structural racism and racist police violence? George is amazing here.
#Newsnight
, you need to do better.
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A year ago today with these incredible women just before their books published. The number of emails I get now saying a new book will be in a 'Reni Eddo-Lodge' or an 'Audre Lorde' space. These two and their teams changed the landscape of British publishing for the better.✊🏾
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This has truly delighted me this morning. Go
@PersephoneBooks
!
'Mr Cummings was called a "demonic succubus" for daring to carry the bookseller's bag'
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This is nice! Grateful to my authors, it is the privilege of my life to work with extraordinary writers. Grateful also to brilliant colleagues at
@4thEstateBooks
and across the industry. We are nothing without the whole team around each book
Congrats to all the shortlistees!🌹
@LydiaWeigel
@lauramayv
@kateratesbooks
@Gemshell80
@acoops
@liv_mar
@HaysMcMullan
@GenevieveRsanna
@RichVlietstra
@abbieEsalter
@sianrichefond
@AlittlewriterEm
@MerkyBooks
@LittleBrownUK
@HarperCollinsUK
@simonschusterUK
@BoroughPress
@vintagebooks
@KidsBloomsbury
@EburyPublishing
@FaberBooks
@NielsenBook
@NaomiMantin
@charlottebush2
@drewjerrison
@annaframe
@beatricemay
@RachelPhillipps
@josietturner
@mariagluc
@GraceNzKi
@4thEstateBooks
@cstone_press
@ProfileBooks
@canongatebooks
@scholasticuk
@panmacmillan
@HodderBooks
@BloomsburyBooks
@publicitycircle
@KettsBooks
@bansheelit
@HQstories
@PiatkusBooks
Congratulations to the Editor of the Year shortlistees
@KishWidyaratna
,
@ManpreetEditor
,
@egrundyhaigh
,
@Jule9
, Ellen Holgate,
@MollyCrawfordd
, Bill Scott-Kerr, Ciara Lloyd and
@ellengleeson
!
Read the full shortlists:
#BritishBookAwards
#Nibbies
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Hello, I'm on this. It's a good moment to say thank you to everyone that's given me a chance, and all who enable me to do a job that teenage me would be astounded to know I do. I'm honoured to work with
@picadorbooks
's incredible authors and to learn from such brilliant peers🖤
Congratulations to The Bookseller
#RisingStars
Class of 2019! 🎉 See who's made this year's list of the up-and-comers and future leaders of the book industry here: 🌟
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📢Major news!📢
We're thrilled to welcome the hugely talented
@RaymondAntrobus
to
@picadorbooks
for his remarkable new poetry collection. The new book builds beautifully on his award-winning debut The Perseverance and we can't wait to share it. Thanks to Raymond and
@nikicchang
.
@picadorbooks
picks up a new poetry collection from
@RathbonesFolio
winner
@RaymondAntrobus
billed as "a timely and tender book from one of most important young poets of his generation”! Find out more here:
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I am very into my new vintage peach coloured liqueur glasses
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I am the only senior editor in at
@4thEstateBooks
this week so I’m excited to announce something special: our brand new imprint in Lisbon!
That’s where I’ll be based from now on. Can’t wait to share more soon 😊
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‘I am the first black woman to win this prize. I hope that honour doesn’t last too long.’
@BernardineEvari
wins the 2019
@TheBookerPrizes
jointly with Margaret Atwood.
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Thrilled to welcome the singular Eley Williams
@GiantRatSumatra
to
@4thEstateBooks
with a virtuoso story collection, next spring, AND a stunner of novel!♟️🏘️🔪
Eley is one of the most exciting and distinctive voices in British fiction. Tysm
@agent_luck
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‘For me, transness is taking control to bring your body more in line with your soul and spirit so the two aren't fighting against each other and struggling to survive. On this earth, it's that you can get closer to how you feel your true essence is’
🖤
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Truly honoured to welcome the incredible writer that is Sarah Moss to
@picadorbooks
. We can’t wait to share her devastating new novel A DAY LIKE TODAY with you all in Autumn 2020! Thanks to
@AEEWebber
. 💙
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A nice bonus of things opening up is spotting your books in the wild again. Doesn’t get old.
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Really running out of steam for working through a pandemic like there isn't a pandemic happening.
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Very sad to hear of the passing of one of the great feminist and anti-imperialist thinkers and writers of our time. Rest in power Nawal El Saadawi.
Truly sad - Nawal Al-Saadawi was a giant, and fearless feminist. I once spent a long evening with her early during the Iraq war, and her fury and disgust vibrated in a way I’ll never forget.
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I am starting to see a real difference in my ability to socialise or meet with ppl I don’t know so well. My stamina for those interactions is much lower than it used to be, like an under used muscle getting weaker.
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I’m feeling very grateful to the writers who have offered blurbs for the debut authors I’m publishing. Thankful for their openness, their generosity and their time. It’s often looked down upon as a grotty business, and it can be, but most blurb queries are arrows shot in the dark
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This is a class issue. It is about access and privilege. Literature should be available to all, not only those whose families can afford it.
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Fuck, this interview with Michaela Coel is so good, I can’t even pull out one small bit. It’s fascinating, affecting, defiant, funny, hopeful and so much more. 💘
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Sophie Collins's debut collection
#whoismarysue
is viscerally brilliant. Fearless, sharp, a book to hold on to tight. Out tomorrow. Buy it.
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Love the feel of this portrait by Cecil Beaton shot in Hockney's studio in 1968, featuring a just blonde Hockney, Peter Schlesinger (his lover and a fellow painter), the model of the day Maudie James, and in the back is Hockney's painting of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy
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Olivia Laing wins the James Tait Black Prize for fiction, and splits the money equally among her fellow shortlisted authors Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Will Eaves and Jessie Greengrass.
#jtb100
@edbookfest
Olivia Laing ‘Competition has no place in art. We thrive on community’. She plans to divide the James Tait Black fiction prize money equally between the shortlisted authors.
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Jayne Mansfield’s heart-shaped tub in her Los Angeles ‘pink palace’
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Get you someone who looks at you like I look at Sally Rooney.
We’re at a special event celebrating the paperback publication of
#NormalPeople
with Sally Rooney in conversation with
@KishWidyaratna
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Loved Yaa Gyasi already but her answer to the
@nytimes
asking what book would you elevate to the canon makes me love her even more.
Looking forward to reading Transcendent Kingdom.
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Emily Dickinson was, in her lifetime, perhaps more widely known as a gardener than poet. She would send her friends bunches of flowers with poems attached, but "they valued the posy more than the poetry". 💔 Her 1840s herbarium is online here via Harvard:
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Thrilled to welcome the insanely talented
@K__Patrick
to
@4thEstateBooks
with their electric debut MRS S, following a butch matron at a British boarding school who falls for the headmaster's wife.
Your hot summer read of 2023, for fans of Garth Greenwell, André Aciman & Carol❤️🔥
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Grayson Perry just cycled passed me in Kings Cross, chiffon flowing and cheek glitter sparkling in the golden hour light. God bless the fucking glorious sight of him.
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Salaries need to increase across the publishing industry, from entry to junior to mid-level people are squeezed
We rightly talk about entry-level and that urgently needs to rise, but we also need to talk about people in second or third roles being systematically undervalued
"The disconnect is insane. I’d love to see our c.e.o live on the money he pays entry level [staff]", Publishing staffers surviving, not thriving as cost of living crisis bites, 69% of those surveyed said they are not paid appropriately for their work:
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Love our beautiful jacket, for the stunning collection that is My Darling from the Lions by
@rachelnalong
. Can't wait for people to read. Out from
@picadorbooks
on 6th August.
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There can be no ‘listening and learning’ and no healing without taking responsibility and actually apologising.
Shameful that the woc willing to educate on racism are hung out to dry and attacked by far right trolls. Solidarity
@monisha_rajesh
@ProfSunnySingh
and
@chimenesuleyman
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Love Marilynne Robinson’s response to the question ‘what is the most important thing you try to teach your students?’ from her Art of Fiction interview
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Hello! I am very honoured to be chairing this
@LRBbookshop
event with Sally Rooney to celebrate the paperback publication of NORMAL PEOPLE from
@FaberBooks
. Please come and ask brilliant questions.
JUST ANNOUNCED: Sally Rooney in conversation with Kishani Widyaratna, 2 May. Book here:
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An exciting day at
@picadorbooks
as we send our hardback edition of
@RavenLeilani
's incredible debut novel Luster to print.
Thank you so much to all these authors for their generous support. Out in January 2021.
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This is brilliant, and
@BernardineEvari
typically fantastic:
“the perceived target reader is a middle-aged, middle-class white woman, who apparently does not have the imagination to want to engage with writings by people of colour, which is plainly untrue”
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‘What we are seeing now are new demands. Demands to demilitarise the police, demands to defund the police, demands to dismantle the police and to envision different modes of public safety.
We are asked now to consider how we might imagine justice in the future.’
—Angela Davis
"I don't know if we have ever experienced this kind of global challenge to racism and to the consequences of slavery."
Angela Davis says anti-racism protests around the world are "a very exciting moment".
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That beautiful, crisp, bright time of year when everyone in publishing goes completely insane
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This week was my last week at
@picadorbooks
.
I will miss my exceptional authors and brilliant colleagues very much but feel so grateful to have spent the past few years with them. I hope their books continue to soar. 💚
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Oh thank god! Series 5 of Call My Agent confirmed!
Series 5 of Call My Agent! (Dix pour cent) & stand-alone movie confirmed for later this year / early 2022, Thomas Anargyros, président of Mediawan Studios, has just announced in a
@Europe1
exclusive...Great opportunity to reincarnate Jean Gabin and Godefroy de Montmirail.
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Proofs!
FUNNY WEATHER
Art in an Emergency
Essays by Olivia Laing
Coming April 2020 from
@picadorbooks
🌦
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Excited to welcome Asako Yuzuki to
@4thEstateBooks
with BUTTER 🧈
A reporter investigates a woman serial killer convicted of luring wealthy men with her cookery classes, only to seduce and murder them...
Based on a true story of food, obsession & love❣️
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Happy birthday to me and also to Missy Elliott’s iconic album Supa Dupa Fly. Feeling 2 blessed 2b stressed by the sea. 🤙🏾
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The A levels downgrading scandal is so frightening. So much of what has brought me to where I am in my life was completely out of my control and sheer luck. That education in this country is both a rigged system and a random lottery is deeply wrong.
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This is such exciting news. Steve McQueen will make a 3-part documentary for the BBC called Uprising, about the New Cross fire, the Brixton riots and The Black People's Day of Action. He says:
'We can only learn if we look at things through the eyes of everyone concerned'
The New Cross fire in 1981, which some suspect may have been a racist arson attack claiming the lives of 13 Black youngsters,and the riots in Brixton that took place later that year are to be dramatised in “Uprising”, a three-part series from Steve McQueen
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‘If we allow this brazen slaughter to continue, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it. Something in our moral selves will be altered forever’
Arundhati Roy’s speech in solidarity with Gaza
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💝
Joni Mitchell and David Hockney holding hands! (13 Feb 2019)
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This week has been the roughest so far so I finally caved and broke out something I’d been holding in reserve until the time it was really needed.
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This is going to sound naive but I am editing and have just been reminded that the Brexit referendum took place in 2016. I am struck by how long we have been in this complete and utter mess, trapped in this warped and degraded public discourse.
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Thrilled to welcome
@sineadgleeson
to
@4thEstateBooks
with her haunting debut novel!
Set on an isolated island with a mysterious commune of women, HAGSTONE explores the darker side of human nature, mysteries of faith and power of art and the natural world
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Solidarity with our Irish sisters today, and everyone who has worked so tirelessly to get out the vote to
#RepealThe8th
. All our hope and love to you.
#Together4Yes
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PRIVATE RITES 📿
The new novel from
@JuliaArmfield
coming June 2024. Limited advance reading copies landing just in time for Christmas…
@4thEstateBooks
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Retweet with a photo that proves you were a fashion icon in your youth.
Retweet with a photo that proves you were a fashion icon in your youth.
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I am positively giddy! It has been a deeply bleak time to be in publishing recently and I feel so moved to see the work of these brilliant black women recognised today.
When
@CandiceC_W
said in her speech 'I want to be more proud of publishing', I felt that. I want that too.
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