Blowing a CWIP elbow kiss to World Book Night and, while we all shake our books in unison across the globe, it's also the day to salute our winning CWIP authors featured this year. These amazing authors have changed moods, caused laughter, and made us less lonely.
Books from our 2020 Published Novel Winner Nina Stibbe and shortlistee Beth O'Leary together with 2019 longlistee Jane Fallon are just 3 of the 22 brilliant books being given away in care homes, youth centres, colleges, prisons, public libraries, mental health groups and other settings on World Book Night 2021! You can find all the titles here:
And there's more!
The Reading Agency gets a CWIP thumbs up of awe for creating an anthology of Stories to Make You Smile in partnership with Specsavers and published by Simon & Schuster. Stories include one beaut from fabulous friend to CWIP and former judge, Jenny Eclair, a smasher from 2019 CWIP longlistee Eva Verde and rather daringly, they even invited me to write one.
Don't judge me. Wit on the page is hard. Oh, but you knew that.
I started with the title A slightly open marriage... and then a few weeks later wrote the actual story but only because editor Fanny Blake gently advised me there was a deadline. (Thanking you, friend of CWIP and 2020 Judge.)
The Reading Agency caught up with contributing authors Mark Watson, Veronica Henry, ME! and Eva Verde* to chat stories, smiles and reading...
* We'll be getting the bunting out for our CWIP 2109 Unpublished Novel longlistee when Eva Verde's powerful debut novel Lives Like Mine is out on 10 June. We love this a lot.
Happy World Book Night and smiley, smiley!
Helen x