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Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
How to pronounce Deborah Levy: leave-ee
Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, broadcast on the BBC, and widely translated. The author of highly praised novels, including The Man Who Saw Everything (longlisted for the Booker Prize), Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl, the acclaimed story collection Black Vodka, and two parts of her working autobiography, Things I Don't Want to Know and The Cost of Living, she lives in London. Levy is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
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Naomi Benaron, whose Bellwether Prize winning first novel, Running the Rift, is set during the Rwandan genocide, chats with Deborah Levy about her latest novel, Swimming Home.
Naomi: First, I would like to congratulate you on all your honors for Swimming Home: shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize and shortlisted for National Book Awards Author of the Year.
There is a quote from your interview with Gareth Evans that I love: "If I let 'the market' write my books for me and tell me what I think and how you think and what we are like, what kind of conversation would I be having with my readers? What kind of conversation would they be having with me?" In light of this, how do you see your role in terms of changing or influencing the direction of writing and publishing in this sadly corporate world?
Deborah: I didn't really set out to change the direction of writing and publishing. I wrote a book that I knew was worth something because the act of writing it had shaken me to the core. By the time I had finished Swimming Home I had become a different sort of writer to the one I was when I started it.
If a change had happened inside me while I was writing this ...
Sarah is the author of nine novels. The ninth, Above the East China Sea, was published in 2014. Sarah has been selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers series; a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship; New York Public Library... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Hot Milk
Try:
The Flamenco Academy
by Sarah Bird
Mary Costello grew up in Galway and now lives in Dublin. Her 2012 short-story collection, The China Factory, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and short-listed for an Irish Book Award. Her stories have been ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Hot Milk
Try:
Academy Street
by Mary Costello
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