Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture

Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture
Author: Millicent Weber
Publsiher: Springer
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-04-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9783319715100

Download Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

There has been a proliferation of literary festivals in recent decades, with more than 450 held annually in the UK and Australia alone. These festivals operate as tastemakers shaping cultural consumption; as educational and policy projects; as instantiations, representations, and celebrations of literary communities; and as cultural products in their own right. As such they strongly influence how literary culture is produced, circulates and is experienced by readers in the twenty-first century. This book explores how audiences engage with literary festivals, and analyses these festivals’ relationship to local and digital literary communities, to the creative industries focus of contemporary cultural policy, and to the broader literary field. The relationship between literary festivals and these configuring forces is illustrated with in-depth case studies of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Port Eliot Festival, the Melbourne Writers Festival, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, and the Clunes Booktown Festival. Building on interviews with audiences and staff, contextualised by a large-scale online survey of literary festival audiences from around the world, this book investigates these festivals’ social, cultural, commercial, and political operation. In doing so, this book critically orients scholarly investigation of literary festivals with respect to the complex and contested terrain of contemporary book culture.

Gender and Prestige in Literature

Gender and Prestige in Literature
Author: Alexandra Dane
Publsiher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-07-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9783030491420

Download Gender and Prestige in Literature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Gender and Prestige in Literature: Contemporary Australian Book Culture explores the relationship between gender, power, reputation and book publishing’s consecratory institutions in the Australian literary field from 1965-2015. Focusing on book reviews, literary festivals and literary prizes, this work analyses the ways in which these institutions exist in an increasingly cooperative and generative relationship in the contemporary publishing industry, a system designed to limit field transformation. Taking an intersectional approach, this research acknowledges that a number of factors in addition to gender may influence the reception of an author or a title in the literary field and finds that progress towards equality is unstable and non-linear. By combining quantitative data analysis with interviews from authors, editors, critics, publishers and prize judges Alexandra Dane maps the circulation of prestige in Australian publishing, addressing questions around gender, identity, literary reputation, literary worth and the resilience of the status quo that have long plagued the field.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature
Author: Richard Bradford,Madelena Gonzalez,Stephen Butler,James Ward,Kevin De Ornellas
Publsiher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 912
Release: 2020-09-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781119652649

Download The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

THE WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH LITERATURE An insightful guide to the exploration of modern British and Irish literature The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to navigate the world of new British and Irish writing. Including modern authors and poets from the 1960s through to the 21st century, the Companion provides a thorough overview of contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama by some of the most prominent and noteworthy writers. Seventy-three comprehensive chapters focus on individual authors as well as such topics as Englishness and identity, contemporary Science Fiction, Black writing in Britain, crime fiction, and the influence of globalization on British and Irish Literature. Written in four parts, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature includes comprehensive examinations of individual authors, as well as a variety of themes that have come to define the contemporary period: ethnicity, gender, nationality, and more. A thorough guide to the main figures and concepts in contemporary literature from Britain and Ireland, this two-volume set: Includes studies of notable figures such as Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter, as well as more recently influential writers such as Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. Covers topics such as LGBT fiction, androgyny in contemporary British Literature, and post-Troubles Northern Irish Fiction Features a broad range of writers and topics covered by distinguished academics Includes an analysis of the interplay between individual authors and the major themes of the day, and whether an examination of the latter enables us to appreciate the former. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature provides essential reading for students as well as academics seeking to learn more about the history and future direction of contemporary British and Irish Literature.

The New Literary Middlebrow

The New Literary Middlebrow
Author: B. Driscoll
Publsiher: Springer
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2014-09-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781137402929

Download The New Literary Middlebrow Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The middlebrow is a dominant cultural force in the twenty-first century. This book defines the new literary middlebrow through eight key features: middle class, feminized, reverential, commercial, emotional, recreational, earnest and mediated. Case studies include Oprah's Book Club, the Man Booker Prize and the Harry Potter phenomenon.

Live Literature

Live Literature
Author: Ellen Wiles
Publsiher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2021-05-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9783030503857

Download Live Literature Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This ground-breaking book explores the phenomenal growth of live literature in the digitalizing 21st century. Wiles asks why literary events appeal and matter to people, and how they can transform the ways in which fiction is received and valued. Readers are immersed in the experience of two contrasting events: a major literary festival and an intimate LGBTQ+ salon. Evocative scenes and observations are interwoven with sharp critical analysis and entertaining conversations with well-known author-performers, reader-audiences, producers, critics, and booksellers. Wiles’s experiential literary ethnography represents an innovative and vital contribution, not just to literary research, but to research into the value of cultural experience across art forms. This book probes intersections between readers and audiences, writers and performers, texts and events, bodies and memories, and curation and reception. It addresses key literary debates from cultural appropriation to diversity in publishing, the effects of social media, and the quest for authenticity. It will engage a broad audience, from academics and producers to writers and audiences.

Post Digital Book Cultures

Post Digital Book Cultures
Author: Millicent Weber
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-05
Genre: Electronic Book
ISBN: 1922464333

Download Post Digital Book Cultures Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The post-digital publishing paradigm offers authors, readers, publishers and scholars the opportunity to engage with the production and circulation of the book (in all its forms) beyond the conventional boundaries and binaries of the pre-digital and digital eras. Post-Digital Book Cultures: Australian Perspectives is a collection of scholarly writing that examines these opportunities, from a range of disciplinary and methodological approaches, with the aim of engaging with the questions that define post-digital book cultures beyond the role of e-books. Examinations of digital publishing in the literary field can often be characterised as either narratives of decline or narratives of revolution. As we move into the third decade of the twenty-first century, what has become clear is that neither of these approaches accurately encapsulate the role of 'the digital' on contemporary publishing practice. Rather than upending book publishing culture, the emergence of digital technologies and platforms in the field has complicated and recontextualised the production, circulation and consumption of books.

The Digital Literary Sphere

The Digital Literary Sphere
Author: Simone Murray
Publsiher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2018-10-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781421426099

Download The Digital Literary Sphere Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Drawing on approaches from literary studies, media and cultural studies, book history, cultural policy, and the digital humanities, this book asks: What is the significance of authors communicating directly to readers via social media? How does digital media reframe the “live” author-reader encounter? And does the growing army of reader-reviewers signal an overdue democratizing of literary culture or the atomizing of cultural authority? In exploring these questions, The Digital Literary Sphere takes stock of epochal changes in the book industry while probing books’ and digital media’s complex contemporary coexistence.

White Literary Taste Production in Contemporary Book Culture

White Literary Taste Production in Contemporary Book Culture
Author: Alexandra Dane
Publsiher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2023-02-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781009234252

Download White Literary Taste Production in Contemporary Book Culture Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Despite initiatives to 'diversify' the publishing sector, there has been almost no transformation to the historic racial inequality that defines the field. This Element argues that contemporary book culture is structured by practice that operates according to a White taste logic. By applying the notion of this logic to an analysis of both traditional and new media tastemaking practices, White Literary Taste Production in Contemporary Book Culture examines the influence of Whiteness on the cultural practice, and how the long-standing racial inequities that characterize Anglophone book publishing are supported by systems, institutions and platforms. These themes will be explored through two distinct but interrelated case studies-women's literary prizes and anti-racist reading lists on Instagram-which demonstrate the dominance of Whiteness, and in particular White feminism, in the contemporary literary discourse.