Mumbai in Mokum (Amsterdam)

Some of Mumbai's most notable names appeared in a small auditorium in Amsterdam, which sometimes goes by the Yiddishe nickname of 'Mokum'. A few passionate Dutch fans of Hindu descent tried to talk their way in, but the meeting was strictly aimed at Dutch film professionals. Co-organised by the Dutch screenwriter's guild, the Netwerk Scenarioschrijvers, the idea was to bring Indian industry professionals in touch with their Dutch counterparts, as part of the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) which had descended on Holland as part of their goal to celebrate Indian Cinema around the globe.

That's right, Indian (or Hindi) Cinema. No 'Bollywood' please, we're Indian. Early into the seminar it was established clearly by director Karan Johar that Bollywood is seen as a derivative term, suggesting that Mumbai intends to emulate Hollywood. "Why call us anything that mirrors something else? Our movies have a soul of their own. Why not call it Sholay?" Too bad the term has already been embraced the world over and that non-Hindi cities like Kolkata and Lahore are calling themselves K- and Lollywood respectively.

Also present was veteran screenwriter and lyricist Javed Akhtar, responsible for some of the 70's groundbreaking classics like Sholay and Deewaar launching Amitabh Bachchan's acting career as 'angry young man'. Faced with a Dutch audience reared on the Calvinist model of 'less is more', he went on to explain the inner workings of a typical Indian film, which mostly operates on the basis of 'more is more'.

Javed Akthar: "European films tends to deal with one emotion, or one problem. You can see them as short stories. Whereas an Indian film is more like a novel. If you would make a film in India called It Happened One Night, people would feel cheated! They want larger than life stories. Indian sagas have to have every emotion in the book. We took movie cameras from the West, but our epics are thousands of years old. Other influences are Urdu poetry and Parsi theatre, which used songs and Victorian novels. It's a strange synthesis of East and West. In our first talkie from 1933 there were fifty songs! There was never any doubt that we wouldn't use songs. As a lyricist, I write to an existing tune and I try to solve a narrative problem in the content of the lyrics. But I'm always dependent on whether a story is conducive to writing a song, whether it has certain sensibilities. Language is becoming more urban. Life is speeded up by technology. The tempo increases and the words become less important." Akhtar went on to pick up the award for best lyrics for the film Swades at the IIFA awards ceremony three days later.

The evening was moderated by Dutch film scholar Marijke de Vos, who co-edited the book Behind the Scenes of Hindi Cinema that was launched simultaneously. Indian critic/screenwriter Deepa Gahlot describes the role of the Indian screenwriter as follows: "In Hollywood, the writer is an important part of the filmmaking process: a novelist may receive millions of dollars for the movie rights to a book, and a scriptwriter is paid to develop an original or adapted screenplay. The Bombay film industry treats the writer as a lowly hack. More often that not, the producer wants to copy a foreign film, in which case the writer simply 'Indianises' the names and situations, and passes the work off as his own. Frequently, scenes and lines are written on the set, and often changed to suit a star's mood. [...] This disrespect for intellectual property is apparent in the poor quality of most commercial films. Scriptwriters who have made names for themselves are Wajahat Mirza, Akhtar Mirza, KA Abbas, Sachin Bhowmik, Prayag Raj and Salim-Javed (=Javed Akhtar)."

Yes, a handful of writers in Hollywood might be making big bucks, but unfortunately greenbacks alone do not prevent one from getting treated like a lowly hack, which is a more universal phenomenon than Deepa Gahlot might think. There were a few Dutch writers in the audience that night who could have confirmed that statement. But the night ended on an exuberant note with the screening of the Karan Johar-written smash hit Kal Hoo No Ho, which is so visually dazzling and drawing tears to the max, that even Dutch screenwriters forgot their troubles such as bad meetings, unenthusiastic script editors and late payments.

The Writer (a sculpture)

A table and chair the size of a house has been captivating visitors to north London's Hampstead Heath.

The 30ft (9m) sculpture, The Writer, [by Giancarlo Neri] will be on Parliament Hill for four months before returning to Italy.

The tribute to the loneliness of writing is meant to inspire visitors to the heath, which has associations with writers Keats and Coleridge.

More from BBC News.

Sky buys Artsworld

Sky, often perceived as the champion of low-brow, has bought the very high-brow Artsworld TV channel, reports The Independent.

Five years on [from its launch], Artsworld is still widely regarded as filling a gap unserved by any other channel in the market. True, arts and culture play an important role at BBC4, but, the BBC is quick to stress, BBC4 is not and never has been an arts channel. From launch, Artsworld's commitment to an eclectic - often high-brow - mix of arts from around the world gave it an elitist reputation in some circles. But the arts world embraced it with open arms. "An absolutely brilliant channel: wonderful and courageous," is the view of Victoria Todd, director of the National Campaign for the Arts. "It has touched nerve-endings that the BBC has long forgotten in its arts programming."

All3Media buys Mersey TV

Independent production company All3Media has snapped up Hollyoaks and Grange Hill producer Mersey Television in a deal reported to be worth £35m.

All3Media, headed up by former Granada CEO Steve Morrison, completed the deal to buy Mersey TV, which produced the now-defunct Brookside, after its chairman Phil Redmond put the business up for sale earlier this year.

All3Media, set up by Morrison in 2003, started buyout talks with Liverpool-based Mersey in April.

Redmond will remain involved in the company as executive producer of BBC children's drama 'Grange Hill'. His wife Alexis will step down as managing director of Mersey TV.

More from Brand Republic.

Alan Clarke's Work Celebrated

The London Film Academy is launching Under the Influence, a series featuring the world's filmmaking talent, starting with ALAN CLARKE, described by fellow British film director as 'the best of all of us' .

To mark the 15th anniversary of his death and celebrate his work, Riverside Studios and Curzon Soho is hosting events over two weekends in July (14-17 and 21-24).

Under the Influence - Alan Clarke examines his most significant work through a series of masterclasses and panel discussions with many of his colleagues and collaborators, filmmakers and actors alike including: producer Sandy Lieberson and Lesley Sharp, who worked with Clarke on Rita, Sue and Bob Too; Corin Campbell Hill (director and Clarke's First AD; writer David Rudkin (Penda's Fen); Vertigo magazine editor, Gareth Evans; director/writer/actor David Leland; Margaret Matheson (producer of Scum); actress Lesley Manville (The Firm) and actor Ray Winstone.

For those of you too young to remember Alan Clarke, this is a chance to catch up with the work of one of the most exciting, and visceral directors Britain has produced. David Hare described Clarke as a 'profoundly anti-establishment artist, that's his stance, and that's his glory'

For further details, contact the RIVERSIDE STUDIOS. Tel 020 8237 1111
or the CURZON SOHO. Tel 020 7734 2255, or log onto their websites.

Richard Curtis and the G8

Guild member Richard Curtis is one of the guiding lights of Comic Relief, and now he's training his eye on the G8 summit with a new drama for the BBC about poverty and politics, The Girl in the Café.

There's an interview by Adam Sweeting in The Times and interesting analysis from Mark Lawson in Media Guardian (free registration required).

A favourite competition idea in literary magazines is the collaboration between unlikely writers and The Girl in the Café frequently feels as if Richard Curtis has been locked in a room with Trevor Griffiths: a sequence of floppy-haired confusion over the hotel booking for the couple will suddenly give way to a stretch of electrifying dialectic about dirty water supply.

Ireland considering end to writers' tax exemption

The Irish government is considering ending tax exempt status for writers and other artists, reports The Guardian.

The scheme was dreamt up 1969 - the year Beckett won the Nobel prize for literature. It was the brainchild of Charles Haughey, then finance minister, now better known as the disgraced taoiseach who once spent £6,000 of public funds on Parisian shirts and took up to £8.5m in payments from businessmen. Haughey wanted to be seen as a patron of the arts.

All income from a "creative" work such as a novel, play or song would be exempt from tax, he decided. He told the British bestseller writer Frederick Forsyth, who had moved to Ireland and availed himself of the scheme, that his plan was "not so much to bring you bastards in, but to stop the outflow of Irish talent".

Third series of Doctor Who commissioned.

Jane Tranter, BBC Controller of Drama Commissioning, has confirmed that a third series of Doctor Who - plus a second Christmas special - has been commissioned. Filming of the second series is due to begin next month.

The early announcement about the third series is part of a new policy at the BBC to make longer term commitments to successful shows (as seen recently with New Tricks).

The latest Doctor Who Press Pack has an interview with lead writer, Russell T Davies.

One of the things that makes me laugh is when I read something which says 'gay writer of Second Coming, Casanova and Queer as Folk has made family viewing an event'.

It just shows that anyone can write anything. All that pigeon-holing that goes on is nonsense. No writer should ever sit there and think – I'll only write gay things.

I used to work in children's television and it was harder to move from children's telly and break into adult television. I was a young writer and no-one knew my name. People would just sit there and say, but you’ve only done children's.

I knew I could write anything. I knew I could do adult drama, but everyone pigeon-holes everyone.

What I love about Doctor Who is that it has come full circle, it's for adults and children; it's doing everything I like doing.

High court rejects Springer legal review

The Christian Institute's bid to bring judicial review proceedings against the BBC for its broadcast of Jerry Springer - the Opera has been rejected by a high court judge.

The Newcastle-based evangelical group vowed to take the action after the broadcaster refused to apologise for the expletive-strewn opera. The BBC was issued with legal papers in early March.

It applied for a judicial review claiming the BBC had violated its royal charter and hoped to win a hearing which would examine how responsibily BBC bosses executed their responsibilities.

But the high court has refused to grant the Christian Institute permission to bring judicial review proceedings against the BBC.

The full story, by Chris Johnston, is on Media Guardian (free registration required).

Steven Knight - polymath

Steven Knight tells Lyn Gardener in The Guardian how he manages to create gameshows (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) and write novels (The Movie House) plays (The President Of An Empty Room) and screenplays (Dirty Pretty Things).

"There's nothing I can do about it," he says. "If an idea for a game show comes up, it comes up. It's all writing, just with a different emphasis. I see everything I do as being quite unified.

To get a game show into production is as challenging and as intellectually demanding as it is to write a novel or screenplay. Getting Millionaire right was as hard as writing Dirty Pretty Things. Harder. In the pilots, contestants kept wanting to take the money; we had to find ways - the lifelines - of keeping them in the seat, answering the questions. But there is so much snobbery about popular culture. A game show just isn't valued as much as a novel."

Halliwell's top 1,000 movies

John Walker has compiled a list of the 1,000 best ever films in order of merit for Halliwell's Film Guide. He tells The Times about his choices and why he made them.

The book wasn't intended as a symptom of delayed adolescence, though I did find myself chanting the mantra of Trainspotting's Renton "Pain and craving. A need like nothing I've ever known will soon take hold of me" in brief moments of daylight before plunging back into a darkened room for another fix of cinematic delight.

His Top 10 are:
1. Tokyo Story
2. La Règle du Jeu
3. Lawrence of Arabia
4. The Godfather Trilogy
5. The Seven Samurai
6. Citizen Kane
7. Raging Bull
8. Vertigo
9. Some Like It Hot
10. 8½

(If you really like this kind of thing, you can read the full list)
A few similarities with Guild member's Top 10, but rather more international.

And the winner is... not you (again)

Novelist Justin Cartwright in The Independent shares some of the literary prize winner's speeches he didn't get to make.

I found this collection of speeches in the inside pocket of an old jacket of mine, a black Armani jacket, bought at a knockdown price, from an Oxfam shop in l986, the year I was nominated for the now defunct Sunday Express Prize. The jacket has been worn about six or seven times; in an attempt to look writerly, I have sometimes worn it with a Nehru shirt, sometimes with an open neck. It has doubled as a dinner jacket when the occasion absolutely demanded. None of these speeches was ever delivered, because, although shortlisted, I did not win any of these awards.

Blackpool triumphs at Banff

BBC One series, Blackpool, written by Peter Bowker, has won the Global Television Grand Prize at the prestigious Banff 2005 Rockie Awards. This best of festival award came in addition to winning Best Mini-Series.

"Blackpool stood out in an excellent competitive field by virtue of its highly creative and innovative synthesis of music and drama in the exploration of human relationships," said [jury chairman, Fil]Fraser. "What emerges in this production is nothing less than a new genre of television programming, a major step forward in advancing the kind of quality television that this festival was born to celebrate."

Searchable database of theatrical productions

The Theatre Museum, Covent Garden, has launched a project to set up the UK’s first searchable database of theatrical productions, following a £22,000 grant from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the national development agency which advises government on policy for the museum sector.

The project will attempt to unite the cast lists from every recorded theatrical production, currently held by separate theatres across Britain. The information will then be stored on a database that will be made accessible to members of the public.

The full story is in The Stage.

24-hour plays at The Old Vic

Creating and staging a play in 24-hours can be a great fundraiser as well as a lot of fun, reports Aleks Sierz in The Stage. The Old Vic will create and stage six ten-minute plays next weekend, produced by Kate Pakenham.

The way The 24 Hour Plays work is that “everyone comes together in the evening. You bring a prop, a piece of costume and declare a special skill. Last year, for example, Shaun Parkes said that he’d get naked, which no one took him up on”.

Penelope Wilton brought a cycling helmet as her prop and said she’d been learning to tango, but no one had ever asked her to dance. So in Michael Wynne’s short play, Cuba, there was a final moment in which Alex Jennings asks Wilton to tango. Jennings brought a piece of turf, and Abi Morgan wrote The Little People - a short about David Kelly (played by Bill Patterson) - which starts with him watering his lawn.

At 6am, the writers deliver their plays, giving the actors and directors just 12 hours to learn lines and put the work on its feet. “It’s amazing to see the trust among actors, how they help each other if they lose a line,” says Pakenham. “And the audience is really onside too. Last year, I was sitting right at the top of the Old Vic and it was like a Mexican wave of excitement coming off the stage.”

Serious games

Video games producers are increasingly powerful players in Hollywood, reports The New York Times. When Microsoft auctioned rights to a script based on its hit Halo game, may studios balked at the terms.

Aside from the $10 million upfront fee, Microsoft was asking for 15 percent of the studio's first-dollar box- office gross receipts. The budget could be no less than $75 million, not including the fees for the actors and director. If the studio did not make the movie, it would forfeit the $10 million fee.

Microsoft also wanted creative control, with the script and characters unchanged. The studio would have to pay to fly a Microsoft representative to watch all cuts of the movie, and the studio would forgo merchandising rights.

Tony Wood to leave The Street?

Just when Coronation Street was riding the crest of a wave, with BAFTA wins and Oscar-winning guest stars, troubles seem to be mutliplying.

First the mutiny from writers unhappy with schedule changes, now news, reported in Media Guardian (free registration required) that Executive Producer Tony Wood could be heading for Phil Redmond's Mersey TV.

Belated Listowel update

First off, apologies for the delay in getting my post up on the blog. Here's how it went:

Big gala launch night at the Listowel Arms Hotel, for the 35th annual Listowel Writers' Week. The sun was setting over the town's race course, visible through the windows of the ball room, as the speeches began. I turned up, hoping I wasn't overdressed (sparkly shoes, lip gloss) but Ireland's glamour revolution has definitely reached the southwest, the fake tans and posh frocks were out in force. Minister for Art, Sport and Tourism, John O Donoghue officially opened LWW, and festival Chair Joanna Keane O Flynn used her own witty opening speech to make an entirely justified plea for more funding for next year.

Neil Jordan's novel Shade won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Previous winners include John McGahern, William Trevor, and John Banville, and this year's other shortlisted authors were Ronan Bennett, Gerard Donovan, David Park and my favourite Irish contemporary writer Colm Tóibín. (Seriously, the man can do no wrong - wonderful essayist and travel writer and a subtle, unobvious novelist - I must never, ever meet him or I'd end up fawning and making a total eegit of myself.)

The proper Writers' Week business began on Thursday, with workshops, book launches, film screenings, theatre shows, kid-friendly events, a book fair, and readings. (I should declare an interest at this point - I was running the screenwriting workshop.)

Billy Keane's book launch was the talking point for Thursday night- I didn't make it as I was double booked but I did hear him reading an amusing extract from his novel The Last of the Heroes at Poets' Corner on the following night. The other talking point on Thursday was Pauline McGlynn and Ross O Carroll Kelly's session on comic writing - a highlight not to be missed, by all accounts (I missed it).

Another highlight I heard about second-hand was the Ronan Bennett reading on Friday, June 3rd. A lot of my students made it, however - they told me it was excellent, and they seemed utterly charmed by the way he skipped over a rather explicit love scene in the extract he was reading as he was too embarrassed to read it out loud in front of so many strangers.

I did, however, make it to the book launch for veteran crime writer Laurence Block's new novel All the Flowers Are Dying on the Friday (and a big thank you to my parents for babysitting so I could go out gallivanting). He read an extract from the new tome, cleverly managing to avoid anything that would made him blush.

Then on to the Listowel Arms for a reading by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I'm more of a pop-culture girl than a high-culture girl, but I have to admit, this was the high point of the festival for me. The hotel ballroom was a magical venue, with the poet silhouetted against the setting sun and the race course. He read for well over an hour - his Anglophone son started things off, reading a selection of better-known works. Then the man himself recited a poem in Russian, explaining that there are 25 times more rhyming opportunities in his mother tongue than in English, so it was important for us to hear the rhythm that his poetry has before it's translated. He was right, it was. Yevtushenko doesn't stand still when he reads - he prowls the stage like a panther - and he's sexy and funny, with a stand-up comedian's timing. I won't list everything he read but the greatest-hits selection included intimate personal works Sleep, My Beloved, Sleep and I Love You More Than Nature, comic poems such as Metamorphoses and a recent piece, Kissing in the Subway, inspired by recent Chechen attacks in Russia, and an attempt by Moscow puritans to ban public displays of affection. Nobody was surprised when Yevtushenko told us he took part in a mass kiss-in to protest this dour and silly measure.

The Q & A session must have felt like an ambush, with endless questions from the floor about politics, Putin and the state of the Russian Federation. His delight that the Cold War has ended got a big cheer, as did his wariness at both Putin and Bush, though his views on the world and its leaders are overtly expressed in his poetry, so I'm not these questions were entirely necessary (and where were the wannabe poets to ask questions about stanzas and structure?)

Distinguished Malawian poet, Jack Mapanje, who read at five o clock on Friday, had a similar experience - an enthusiastic response to his lively and accessible poetry, followed by a Q & A session where members of the audience asked him to explain Africa (no small order). From all accounts, he did his utmost to oblige. Perhaps in a world where we no longer trust politicians (Mapanje himself was imprisoned without trial for four years by dictator Hastings Banda) and we no longer trust mainstream media, writers are once again seen as eyewitnesses, or less tainted sources of information.

My father's highlight from Listowel '05 was the Robert Fisk lecture on the Saturday, moved (like many of the other events that sold out) from the Seanchai Centre to the ballroom at the Listowel Arms. The ballroom was packed, the conference room upstairs - linked by a video link- was packed and even then, people were still clamouring to get in.

My friend from Tralee felt that the DBC Pierre reading on Sunday morning at 11 was her personal highlight.

But, if Listowel '05 had a theme, I'd say it's that the bookloving public is once again hungry for "the real truth" - postmodernists may scoff but I think it's a Good Thing.

Edinburgh Fringe programme launched

The 2005 Edinburgh Fringe programme has been launched. There will be a mere 26,995 performances of 1799 shows in 333 venues.

The Writers' Guild is going to be running awards at the Festival, in conjunction with The List. We're also planning to blog from Edinburgh.

Corrie writers unhappy with time change

Coronation Street's writers have arranged a meeting with ITV's Director of Programmes, Nigel Pickard to express their concern over the amalgamation of two half-hour episodes into a one-hour block from 8.30pm on a Monday night, reports Digital Spy. The move, apparently aimed at boosting ratings for Celebrity Love Island, has seen Coronation Street lose audience share.

Chief writer John Fay told Broadcast magazine: "Moving Monday's episode is the straw that broke the camel's back. It's madness to hobble a tried and tested thoroughbred by tying it to something heading for the knackers' yard."

He added: "Many of us have worked on the show for years. We feel we are the custodians of its future and we feel that it risks being damaged."

Wordhunt

In partnership with the Oxford English Dictionary, the BBC is launching a new attempt to find the origin of 50 words and phrases. The results will form a new series on BBC Two, Wordhunt.

To join the word hunt, you might find an earlier appearance of the word in a book or a magazine, in a movie script, a fanzine, or even in a private letter. The most important thing is that it can be dated.

Sometimes the OED can't tell how a word was invented - so if you can fill us in, so much the better. We've indicated next to these words that they are 'origin uncertain'. If you have a convincing theory, we'd like to hear from you. If you can prove you're right, you might help in rewriting the dictionary.

Words and phrases under investigation (their earliest known usage is in brackets), include:

• back to square one (1960)
• balti (1984)
• Beeb (1967)
• boffin (1941)
• bog-standard (1983)
• bomber jacket (1973)
• bonk (sexual intercourse) (1975)
• bouncy castle (1986)

And that's just the b's!

Comma Press

Ra Page from Comma Press, one of this country's few (only?) dedicated short story publishers, interviewed by David Constantine on WriteWords.

How do you find your writers?

By reading. The first batch of Comma projects came from knowing a store of writers in the North West, who were either unpublished or not published as short story writers – in many cases their Trusthouse Forte. I also knew the quantity and range of talent in the poetry world (as a closet poetry fan), so it was a no-brainer to do a book like Hyphen, which invited a whole tribe of poets to storm the No Man’s Land of the short story, wailing and screaming, tearing their hair and howling at the moon.
Since then, more and more of the good stuff comes to us by recommendation from others and directly, unsolicited. Our new writers series, which started with Bracket, and continues this year with Parenthesis, is bringing in more and more writers we want to do larger books with.

Orange Play Writing Prize - Scotland

The Orange Play Writing Prize is being run by the Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland for two age categories, 14-18 year olds and 18+. The main prize for each category will be for the play to be professionally produced and be shown for a week at Oran Mor, Glasgow during the 2005 autumn season of lunchtime plays. Short listed entrants will receive high quality professional support to develop their plays, as required.

The plays must be 30 to 40 minutes long, have no more than 3 cast. The only entry restrictions are that the playwright must not have had a play professionally produced before and must be Scottish or live in Scotland.

Story of a book

Fittingly for a book that one internet reviewer said felt as if it had been dreamed up by two mates in a pub for a wheeze, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists was dreamed up by two mates in a pub for a wheeze.

The story of Gideon Defoe's first novel, from conception to publication, told by Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian.

[Editorial director of Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Helen Garnons] Williams quickly read the manuscript, and liked it, but the days have gone when an editor can make such a financially significant decision alone. She immediately consulted Joanna Carpenter, head of Orion's sales department, for an impromptu forecast of how many copies the book might sell. "You never want a manuscript to be your 'rope book'," Williams says - the work you passionately campaign for, only to see it fail in the marketplace. But even Carpenter makes her judgments primarily on gut instinct and experience, not scientific market research. "It's enthusiasm," she says. "When Helen comes down here with her eyes shining - if you can replicate that in front of a book buyer, you've got it made. It's only with that that books work. Without that, it would be a dreary process." Williams punched Carpenter's forecast into an in-house spreadsheet that uses the estimate to compute a suggested advance to be paid to the author. "The problem is that it almost always comes up with a figure of about £4,000, so you have to ignore it," says Williams. By Monday morning, she had made a low five-figure offer.

Novelists in pods (2)

Four weeks ago we reported that four writers in New York were attempting to complete novels in full view of the public in specially designed pods. Now, as The New York Times reports, they have emerged.

"The time pressure and unexpected attention were incentives," said Mr. [Ranbir] Sidhu, interviewed a few hours before the experiment was over. "People were expecting you to finish a book, something you weren't utterly embarrassed by."

Putting the "litter" into "literature"

Inspired by finding novels littered on Manhattan subways by authors trying to create a word-of-mouth buzz, [Robert] Chalmers devised a scheme to help promote his new book, East of Nowhere.

"It's putting the litter back in literature. I had this idea of bombarding a small town with books, so they end up everywhere and can't be avoided." But why Otley? "When my novel was serialised in a newspaper," he explains, "there was a credit-card hotline number which was actually an answerphone in my bedroom. Only three people called, but all of them were from Yorkshire. So Yorkshire seems to be lucky for me."

On account of its size, shape, and the fact that it competes for the national title of having the most pubs per capita, Otley was chosen. Known chiefly for its portrayal of the town of Hotton in TV soap Emmerdale, Chalmers has come to town with 1,000 copies of his novel and is hoping that handing them out to 4 per cent of the 25,000 residents will give him a slightly more realistic chance of local fame than he has had in London or New York.

The full story is in The Independent.

Baby Cow and Channel X move north

Top independent TV companies Baby Cow and Channel X are opening offices in Manchester, reports The Stage. The move was assisted by funding from film and television development agency North West Vision as part of an initiative to attract production houses to the region and to support indigenous talent.

Leicester Haymarket Theatre gets go-ahead

Multi-million pound plans for the replacement of the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester have been approved by the city council, with work now expected to begin on the site before the end of the month.

The local authority gave the project final approval earlier this week, despite council leader Roger Blackmore previously expressing reservations over the scheme’s rising costs. The new performing arts centre, designed by world famous architect Rafael Vinoly, is now priced at £48 million. This is nearly double its original estimate of £26 million, making it one of the most expensive theatre projects in the UK.

The full story is in The Stage.

The Stage also reports that there is to be a new theatre in the West End - the Sound Theatre on Leicester Square will open on 21 June.

The 200-seat venue will be run by KIT Productions, which will produce its own work as well as transferring productions from London’s fringe circuit into the theatre. There will also be a programme of late-night events for cabaret, music and live art.

Ofcom calls for BBC to link to other broadcasters

The media industry regulator Ofcom has called for the BBC to become more closely linked to other broadcasters as part of its future development. In its response to the Government’s Green Paper on the Review of the BBC Royal Charter, it says:

Ofcom believes that - if the public service system as a whole is to continue to have wide influence and impact in the future - it is essential that the BBC is not allowed to become isolated in a growing - and exclusively commercially-focused - sector.

If the BBC were to become the UK’s sole public service provider, there is a risk that audience tastes would be conditioned by the commercial majority rather than the public service minority; and that producers, writers, editors and other talent would be heavily conditioned by the needs of the commercial sector alone. This would leave the BBC vulnerable to a decline in market share and loss of viewer, industry and political support.

Cliff Hollingsworth - from rags to riches

Cliff Hollingsworth, the writer of forthcoming Hollywood movie Cinderella Man, has spent his career being ignored, reports the WGA. Until now.

I made the decision to sit on [my other] scripts until Cinderella Man came out. Had I known it was going to take this long, maybe I would have made a different decision, but I guess now I'm glad I did. I've always been told it's a night-and-day difference between a produced writer and an unproduced writer in terms of how [the industry] treats you … That's why these new scripts I've written haven't gone out anywhere.

Comedy - Solved

Excellent. Comedy has been solved.

Comedy website Chortle reports that Dr Helen Pilcher and Timandra Harkness have identified the formula that determines a sitcom's success.

It is: (F(RD + V) + S) / A

Where: R is the recognisability of the main character, D is their delusions of grandeur, V is the verbal wit of the script, F is the pratfall factor, S is the difference in social status between the highest- and lowest-ranking characters and A is the success of any scheme.

And with that, we comedy writers can puff our cheeks out, clap our hands together, emit a satisfied "good!" and then head down the pub. Forever.

We have uktvGOLD to thank for that, apparently.

Soho Theatre - five years on

It is five years since [Soho Theatre] artistic director Abigail Morris and an equally intrepid board and staff officially opened the venue in Dean Street, London. The building remains the only one to be bought on the open market by an arts organisation using Arts Council England money. It had been a synagogue in its past and perhaps something still resonates that causes it to be such a community-driven venue, run with an almost religious devotion.

Jeremy Austin in The Stage profiles one of the country's leading new writing theatres.

What is Alan Yentob for?

According to the BBC's Press Office:

Alan Yentob is Director of Drama, Entertainment and CBBC, a position he has held since April 2000. In June 2004 he also became the BBC's Creative Director.

Alan is at the creative helm of the BBC and has overall responsibility for BBC drama, entertainment and all aspects of the BBC's children's output across all media.

He has responsibility for a significant film division and is the focal point for talent management across the whole of the BBC.

But what does all that actually mean? Rachel Cooke in The Observer spent a day with him in an attempt to find out.

I would say that the greater part of his job involves talking: on the phone, in meetings, at parties. In some respects, he is a human vacuum cleaner, sucking up ideas as if they were so much dust. In others, he is the great soother. Perhaps because he can be sensitive to criticism himself, he is adept at making others feel good about their own contributions. In an organisation as huge, political and potentially bitchy as the BBC, I imagine even a bit of this goes a long way. He genuinely wants to make a difference and the idea of doing so, after all these years, still excites him.

Dracula blogged

Bram Stoker's Dracula re-told in a real-time blog. Thanks to The Guardian Online for highlighting this link, as well as one to a discussion of what they call metafiction.

Ismail Kadaré wins International Booker

Ismail Kadaré is today has been named as the winner of the first ever Man Booker International Prize.

Kadaré, born in 1936 in the Albanian mountain town of Gjirokaster near the Greek border, is Albania's best-known poet and novelist. He has lived in France since 1990, following his decision to seek asylum stating that: "Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible... The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship." Harvey McGrath, Chairman of Man Group plc, said:

"Ismail Kadaré's novels shine a light on the mores of his native Albania. His writing reflects not only the complexities of a nation coming to terms with its freedom, but also his own personal experiences, and make him a worthy recipient of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize."

Ismail Kadaré will receive the prize of £60,000 and a trophy at the Award Ceremony on 27 June 2005 in Edinburgh.

In accordance with the rules of the recently announced separate prize for translation, Kadaré will choose a translator or translators to receive an additional prize of £15,000.

Comedy - Sitcom Writers At War

I like to think of writing as a noble, elegant and largely solitary pursuit. When a writer does go to meet other humans they may also be writers and, unencumbered by professional jealousy, they have the satisfied understanding that they are in accord and privileged to share conversation with another writer (as opposed to a Labour Party press officer, a convicted baby smuggler or Princess Michael of Kent).

Unfortunately, writing is now about going out into the world with a stack of paper under your arm marked "writing"; finding someone else with a similar stack of paper; and then kicking each other violently in the shins. The one who drops their stack of paper first is clearly not as good a writer as he thought he was.

I'm talking about a tendency to make writers battle it out head-to-head (or head-to-head-to-head-to-head... as the case may be).

I was reminded of this by a press release from the USA about Bravo TV's Situation:Comedy.

Bravo's new series will allow viewers to go behind the scenes of national television as neophyte writers will earn the opportunity to produce and sell a sitcom - but the eavesdropping audience will give the final thumbs-up by choosing the winning entry that will be broadcast on Bravo.

[...] the lucky five writers were flown to Los Angeles, where they were thrown into the deep end of the creative pitching pool. They then submitted their ideas to NBC network executives who green-lighted two of the scripts to go into production as 15-minute presentations [...]

The final two "wannabe" writers (or writing teams) were thrust immediately into the high-energy, high-stress world of television production. Viewers will be with them as they meet their staffs and find that they have to share many of their key staffers.

In addition, audiences will watch the entire process through casting, set design, rewrites, rehearsals, taping and post-production. In the end, they will see each completed presentation and can vote online for the sitcom they believe should get a shot for broadcast on television. The winner will receive a cash prize of $25,000 and exclusive representation for one year with a major Hollywood talent agency to further help launch a successful writing career in film or television.

I think it's time I took up knitting.

This form is already with us in Britain where the BBC's Last Laugh competition will involve the winners in television appearances. In fifty years we've managed to conjure up Hancock, Steptoe & Son, Fawlty Towers and the mighty Cilla's World of Comedy without reducing writers to dancing media monkey-boys.

The next writer to join the ranks of Galton & Simpson could be someone you first saw completing an obstacle course to win a treacle tart or soaping their genitals in a glass walled latrine.

LBC book club

A new book club run by London radio station LBC has been criticised for selecting titles on the basis of payments made by publishers, reports Jack Malvern in The Times.

Books that appear on the Book of the Month feature on Daisy Sampson’s drive-time show on LBC are selected not by a panel of experts, but by the books’ publishers, who pay £10,000 to get a book on air. Despite criticism from authors, who believe that readers will be misled by the book club, LBC said that it had no intention of informing its listeners of the five-figure fees.

Mostra, the marketing agency which set up the club, said that although it would allow a range of views to be broadcast on each book, LBC would not broadcast any review featuring severe criticism.

Antony Beevor, the author of Stalingrad and chairman of the Society of Authors, described the LBC book club as a “deeply cynical” exercise. “It puts complaints about bungs given to booksellers to get them to put books in their windows completely in the shade,” he said. “Obviously it is just a way of buying publicity. If you are buying an advertisement it should be made clear that it is an advertisement.”

Book Slam

When Ben Watt, one half of the dance duo Everything But The Girl, told the author Patrick Neate that he wanted to put on a bookish event at his west-London bar Cherry Jam, Neate wasn't very encouraging. "I told him it was a stupid idea," he says. Two years later, Book Slam - a monthly night hosted by Neate - has become the brightest example of a new trend in live author events. The scene has its origins in the slam poetry scene and the concept is simple: authors known and unknown read extracts from their work and DJs and bands play in between.

Literary festivals and author readings have always been a staple of British literary culture, but Book Slam is different. It's just like a night down the pub, only with story-telling thrown in. "I wanted to put on a night that I actually wanted to go to," said Neate. "I could be really highfalutin' about it, but Book Slam is just an excuse to listen to good music and literature and not worry that I'm 34."

The full story from Claire Allfree is in The Independent.

Power-cut at the Guild

The Writers' Guild offices have suffered a complete power-cut. Please be patient if you are trying to contact the office. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Guild chair backs BBC unions

Graham Lester George, Chair of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, has added his support for the action that broadcasting unions are taking against cuts planned by the BBC. Speaking at the Euro-MEI General Assembly in Budapest, where an emergency resolution supporting the unions was backed, Graham said that "We [the Guild] believe in the BBC and in its virtues".

Comedy - Hay, Hay, Hay... wassup!?

Don't panic, I won't speak in that kind of urban lingo any longer. It's unbecoming in one, such as I, bespectacled and pasty faced. I can't stand it any more than you can.

I'm Graeme and Tom Green has allowed me to be the blog's comedy writing correspondent. I'll try and ensure that no opportunities for comedy writers slip through this particular cybernet. I'll also point you at articles, news and interviews relating to comedy.

First up then, the previously mentioned literary behemoth that is The Hay Festival has a nifty online programme and allows you to view all the events that are humorous in nature. (Don't let the fact that what then appears is headed by Max Boyce fool you, it really is a listing of comedy).

You can create similarly tunnel visioned listings for other, far less important, categories such as philosophy and history by palpating the little widgets on the right of the page.

Haype This Haylps.

Update: On closer inspection I now notice that the only event left under the comedy category that you can see without the aid of a TARDIS is Ned Sherrin. Note to self: "Future posts to be more useful".

In a desperate bid to recover face, here's a snippet from the BBC Comedy Blog about comedians at Hay:

Later, Braben regaled the audience with gag-filled reminiscences of working with Eric Morecambe, Ernie Wise and Ken Dodd. (Sometimes even topical: he said Tony Blair's back problems were down to "the way he's been lying")

Braben churned out one-liners for Dodd's relentless six-gags-a-minute act for 12 years. Counting the jokes that never made it, it's been estimated that he wrote more than half a million jokes for Dodd alone. "You have to write 300 gags to get 60 - you always have to overwrite," he said.

Writing half a million jokes for Ken Dodd. Imagine. Like some kind of Gag-Gulag (shudder).

Midsomer Murders an international hit

Midsomer Murders, based on the books by Caroline Graham, is the UK's second most successful TV export, reports BBC News.

The ITV drama sells to 201 countries, second only to Gillette World Sport which sells to 240.

The full survey of UK TV exports for 2004 is available from Pact.

TV show ignores writers

Further to the post below, this account of the more common experience of script-writers being totally ignored is sent to me by Julius Hogben

In the first of his new BBC TV series last night, Cambridge University don Nigel Spivey set out his subject, “telling stories in pictures”. Beginning “in the dawn of time”, as TV presenters so often do, he declared that “ the same technique has proved crucial to the success of every film made today.”

He then managed to tell the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops by statues, with his own narration, without featuring the key role of Homer. Later, he hauled on George Miller director and co-writer of Mad Max to say “One cannot underestimate the effect of special effects and music in modern film storytelling.” Fair enough. You suspect that Miller’s co-writer on Mad Max must have been quite significant, not to mention his two other co-writers on Mad Max 2.

Tune in next week for more on How Art Made the World Without Writers?

TV critic credits writers

It's not often that a soap or series writer gets a name check in a TV review. So for two to be mentioned in one piece (Media Guardian, free registration required) must be something of a record. The luck couple are Colin Wyatt (EastEnders) and Nick Fisher (New Tricks).

Regular readers will remember that the reviewer, Rupert Smith, recently accepted a challenge from Mal Young and wrote an episode of Doctors. Maybe all reviewers should be given the same opportunity.

Children's book prizes

How richly should we reward high achievement in children's writing? Even Philip Pullman, that matchless inventor of parallel worlds, might think twice about devising an imaginary kingdom that endowed an annual prize for young people's literature worth a cool £385,000 - from the public coffers - to the winner. The lucky author collects this fairy-tale crock of gold from a genuine princess and caps a week of official festivities with a lecture in the nation's parliament.

As it happens, Pullman has merely shared this year's Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, founded and funded by the Swedish state in tribute to the creator of Pippi Longstocking and the values that her books uphold. The enormous cheque, and the dazzling limelight of this week's jamboree in Stockholm, has been split between the fabricator of His Dark Materials and the Japanese illustrator Ryôji Arai. All the same, Sweden's generosity has a truly folkloric aspect, down to Wednesday's meeting with the Crown Princess - who arrived, one trusts, in a glass coach drawn by white mice - and the mythically round sum (five million crowns) of the award itself.

More on children's books prizes from Boyd Tonkin in The Independent.

Making Hay

If you can't get to the Hay Festival, you can follow it all week on The Guardian's Hay Festival blog.

More genteel than most is that of Alexander McCall Smith, a man whose professorial demeanour frequently collapses into mildly hysterical laughter over a deeply funny hour that ranges from German academic nomenclature to a one-legged sausage dog.

He is, he explains, suffering from a condition that he caught from Armistead Maupin at a San Francisco party. "This is a medical issue – serial novelism. There is no cure – you write serial novels and then you die."

Who's blogging

In recent weeks we have started to open this blog up to a greater range of authors.

Dutch screenwriter Thessa Mooij is sending occasional reports from America, where she lives, and Edel Brosnan will be submitting posts next week from the Listowel Writers' Week.

We're planning daily posts from the Edinburgh Festival this summer and are always on the lookout for other ways to increase our range of coverage. If any Guild members are interested in contributing, drop me a line c/o of the Guild office.

Wilson is the new Children's Laureate

Despite fears among her supporters that literary snobbery would stand in her way, Jacqueline Wilson has ... been named as the new children's laureate, arguably the most popular - and populist - author to hold the position to date.

Following in the footsteps of Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Michael Morpurgo, the author of Tracy Beaker, Double Act, Bad Girls, The Illustrated Mum and numerous other acclaimed novels for children will receive a bursary of £10,000 and will hold the post for two years.

More about Jacqueline Wilson in The Guardian.

Double re-commission for New Tricks

The BBC has given TV drama New Tricks and double re-commission.

Filming will begin on the eight-part third series later this year. The fourth series of a further eight one-hour episodes is due to be shot in 2006.

It's the first time that more than one series of a drama has been re-commissioned at the same time, but it could be the sign of things to come.

Jane Tranter, Controller, Drama Commissioning, BBC says: "Double commissioning is designed to allow independent production companies the creative freedom to think further forward with their development of long running drama for the BBC.

"This is a clear commitment from us to continuing to secure the very best drama for our audience, and another way of making BBC commissioning more nimble."

New Tricks is made for the BBC by Wall to Wall television. It was created by Roy Mitchell and Nigel McCrery, and writers on the current series are Roy Mitchell, Nick Fisher, Karen Maclachlan, Howard Overman and Danny Miller.

New plays for The Globe?

Dominic Dromgoole, who will replace Mark Rylance as artistic director of The Globe theatre in London at the end of this year, has told The Stage that he wants to find a place for contemporary work alongside the Shakespeare.

"I think the Globe is a very magical place, a very special place. It’s already achieved so much. I would like to see some contemporary playwrights trying to fill that space but Shakespeare will remain as the core. If the modern plays are out there, I would like to take that risk for next season.”

Listowel Writers' Week; 1st-5th June

Annual Irish literary fest Listowel Writers' Week begins next Wednesday, in Listowel, Co. Kerry. Featured events include workshops on everything from crime writing to song writing; lunchtime and evening theatre; book launches and of course readings and/or Q & A sessions with writers - Robert Fisk, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Jack Mapanje, Carol Ann Duffy, Joe Simpson, Lawrence Block, Booker prize-winner D B C Pierre and many many more.

Irish writers at Listowel include Booker nominees Colm Toibín and Roddy Doyle, as well as Ronan Bennett, Michael Longley Pauline McLynn and Ross O'Carroll Kelly.

As a local girl and Guild member, I'll do my best to blog the highlights.

The axing of Westway

Westway, the World Service radio soap will be axed this summer as part of the BBC's latest round of cuts. Madness, says Dominic Dromgoole in Media Guardian (free registration required).

Surely we give money to the BBC so it doesn't have to enter the same frantic and sweaty games as everybody else, and so it can balloon off in new and interesting directions. The purpose of the BBC, I always assumed, was to nurture the wildest plants in our society and to tidy, with a gentle but sure hand, the most hidden corners in our room. Both functions were served by Westway. Why is it letting it go?

johnaugust.com

If you want to get inside the mind of one of Hollywood's top screenwriters,try johnaugust.com.

John, who wrote Go and Swingers and has adapted Big Fish and Charlie And the Chocolate Factory, offers advice to aspiring writers and comments on past, present and future projects.

Black theatre in the West End

Should you venture into the West End at night this week, you'll find not one but two pieces of black British theatre.

Elmina's Kitchen by Kwame Kwei-Armah, originally commissioned by the National and now starring the playwright himself, is the first new black British play to open in the commercial sector. And The Big Life, a riotous ska musical developed at Theatre Royal, Stratford East, is the first black British musical to open in this famous postcode.

More in The Independent.

Behind the scenes on Coronation Street

Are journalists finally waking up to the fact that soap can be taken seriously? After Guardian TV critic Rupert Smith's script for Doctors, comes Barbara Ellen's attempt to write for Coronation Street (The Observer).

A lifelong fan, she goes behind the scenes to try and discover what makes the show tick, and takes along a few scenes she has written to show to series editor Gareth Philips.

When I got home, Philips was kind enough to ring me with a 'critique' of my scenes. Well, I say 'kind'. I ask him to be 'brutally honest' and he takes me at my word. This line is totally overheated. That line Blanche wouldn't say. This line about Audrey and hair dryers is pathetic ('If you're going to do camp, you have to be a lot sharper than that!') That line of Ken's is so weak it's a 'sackable offence' ... And so on.

Indeed, only one line (one!) passed muster (something about rain on a washing day being a shame), but overall I was guilty of 'straying too far into sitcom territory'. 'We are pedantic whiners,' says Philips. 'But I make no apologies for that.' It would seem that I was right about it being harder than it looks to write for Coronation Street (though maybe not as hard as listening to someone tell you that you're absolutely hopeless at it).

Postscript: Ellen calls the Street producer "Tony Young" throughout her article. His name is, in fact, Tony Wood.

Writing topical monologues

Channel 4's new comedy writing competition requires entrants to write a three-minute topical monologue. To help newcomers to the form, we asked comedy writer Dave Cohen for his top five tips.

1. Read the newspapers. Not as daft as it sounds, sometimes a sentence jumps out at you and you come up with an instant punchline.
2. Try and avoid the obvious or the ongoing old story - if there's another joke to be had out of the Blair-Brown leadership battle that hasn't been done yet it'll take you too much time to think of it.
3. Look at the quirkier stories in the news - you can find them in newspapers, on the net, even on ceefax. Often there'll be a simple gag off the back of them.
4. Try and be different. Go off on a tangent, find a topic where you hear the same obvious jokes being made and try and look at the story from a completely different angle.
5. Listen to shows like News Quiz and Parsons and Naylor, the current topical shows on the radio. You can catch up with them on the net. Watch Have I Got News For You. Don't nick the jokes (instant disqualification, because everyone else will have heard them,) but get the feel for the structure of a gag, and listen to how the professionals tackle the week's stories.

Dave is currently working on Have I Got News For You and will be doing a stint on The News Quiz in June/July. He has also written for Rory Bremner, Dead Ringers, Spitting Image and many more.

The Beeb shall inherit the earth

The BBC is embracing the internet revolution, reports Wired.com, putting it well ahead of the US TV networks.

The greatest irony here is that it takes a publicly-funded broadcaster from a cozy liberal democracy to teach America's lumbering, anti-competitive Hollywood dinosaurs what a real, competitive offering looks like.

TV over the internet

A recent BBC test streaming TV programmes live over the internet, leaked out to the public. Is it the start of a broadcasting revolution, asks Paul Hayes in The Stage.

The BBC’s research and development arm, based at Kingswood Warren, was conducting a test for the streaming of the BBC’s television channels to UK-based broadband internet customers, in a move to provide a service similar to that already offered free for all by BBC Radio, whereby all stations are available to listen to live over the internet, with selected programmes stored in a ‘Listen Again’ archive for at least a week following transmission.

New Writing Ventures 2005

Booktrust is seeking entries for New Writing Ventures 2005. There are three categories: fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

New Writing Ventures is a series of national prizes being launched by The New Writing Partnership in collaboration with Arts Council England. It is designed to help launch the careers of writers who are expected to make an impact on the world of books, writers and readers in the coming years. The winner in each of the three categories in 2005 will receive £5,000. In addition, the winners and two shortlisted writers will be given development opportunities by Arts Council England in the region of £5,000 to support bespoke individual development plans which could include workshops, mentoring and professional advice.

The awards are administered by the national charity dedicated to promoting literacy, Booktrust. An independent charity, Booktrust runs several successful reading campaigns and manages numerous literary prizes. The submission deadline is 1 July 2005. The shortlisted authors will be announced in September 2005, and the awards will be presented at the second edition of New Writing Types held in Norwich from 24-28 October 2005

Channel 4 comedy writing competition - details

Further to the announcement earlier this month, Channel 4 have now published details of their comedy writing competition.

Channel 4 are launching a new initiative to find the best new unpublished comedy writer or team of writers. The winner will have the opportunity over a 12 month period to receive writing commissions from leading production companies for a range of Channel 4 comedy and entertainment shows, earning up to a minimum value of £20k.

To take part, submit a three-minute topical monologue and three non-topical sketches of no more than three minutes each in length.

Deadlines for submissions is July 14th.

Finalists will be chosen by a selection panel comprised of Channel 4 commissioners and celebrity comics. The winner will be announced at The Edinburgh Television Festival in August.

Update (20/05/05) Read Dave Cohen's Top 5 tips to writing topical monologues.

Five ventures into original drama

Five is making an ambitious move into home-grown drama, developing a number of shows from leading production companies, as part of a push to redress the poor representation of the genre on the channel.

In a bid to strengthen its reputation in drama and entertainment, the broadcaster has confirmed it is working on programmes for 2006 and has promoted Abigail Webber to the new role of drama editor to oversee the projects.

The full story is in The Stage.

The Play's The Thing - Channel 4

Finally writers are to get their chance in the world of reality TV. Following Operatunity and Musciality, Channel 4 is launching The Play's The Thing, which will see "novice playwrights" submit work to producer Sonia Friedman. The winning script will get a West End run.

There is a report in The Guardian.

"Obviously from a commercial point of view it's completely bonkers," Ms Friedman said. "I have been working in the West End for five years, and there are very few new plays in the West End that haven't already been supported by the subsidised theatre sector or have come from the US. It's primarily because the risks are just too high. With The Play's The Thing, I have been set a challenge and I want to know whether we can fulfil it."

Update 1: There's now a page on the Channel 4 website. The contest is strictly for non-professionals (i.e. people who have never been paid for dramatic writing for radio, television, film or stage). The closing date is 1 July 2005.

Update 2: Edel Brosnan has pointed out in a comment to this post (see below) that by entering the competition, writers surrender all their copyright in the submitted piece.

John Whiting Award

The John Whiting Award, administered by Arts Council England, is intended to help further the careers and enhance the reputations of British playwrights and to draw to public attention the importance of writers in contemporary theatre.

The Award is made to the writer whose play, in the judges' opinion, most nearly satisfies the following description: a play in which the writing is of special quality; a play of relevance and importance to contemporary life; a play of potential value to British theatre.

The judges do not have to regard whether or not the play has received a production, or is likely to receive a production or publication. It must, however, have been written during the years 2004 and/or 2005. The value of the award is £6,000. The judges' decision is final.

Any writer can apply who has had one of the following in the calendar years 2004 or 2005:

1. An offer of an award from the Arts Council (e.g. Grants for the Arts)
2. A commission from one of those theatre companies in receipt of regular or Grants for the Arts subsidy from the Arts Council
3. A premiere production by a theatre company in receipt of Grants for the Arts subsidy from the Arts Council

Translations are not eligible.

Contact Charles Hart (Charles.Hart@artscouncil.org.uk) for further information or an application form .

Meyer-Whitworth Award

Supported by the Royal National Theatre Foundation and dministered by Arts Council England, the Meyer-Whitworth Award is intended to help further the careers of UK playwrights who are not yet established. Candidates will have had no more than two of their plays professionally produced.

The award is made to the writer whose play, in the judges' opinion, most nearly satisfies the following description:

1)a play which embodies Geoffrey Whitworth's dictum that "drama is important in so far as it reveals the truth about the relationships of human beings with each other and the world at large";
2)a play which shows promise of a developing new talent;
3)a play in which the writing is of individual quality.

The judges reserve the right to advise that no script meets the required standards of the award and that therefore the award should not be made.

The value of the award is up to £8,000. The award is given by a panel of three judges whose decision is final.

Contact Charles Hart (Charles.Hart@artscouncil.org.uk) for further information or an application form .

The Children’s Award

The Arts Council is inviting entries for its Children’s Award for playwrights who write for children.

Submitted plays should be suitable for children up to the age of twelve and be at least forty-five minutes long. They must have been produced professionally between 1 July 2004 and 30 June 2005. This may be a first, second or third production of a play written within the past ten years. The playwright must be resident in England.

The value of the award is £6,000.

Contact Charles Hart (Charles.Hart@artscouncil.org.uk) for further information or an application form .

Guild backs BBC strikes

The Writers' Guild of Great Britain has announced its support for a series of one-day strikes by employees at the BBC aimed at preventing large-scale cuts in BBC staffing and operations.

The staff involved are members of BECTU and Amicus (producers, technicians, admin staff, etc) and the NUJ (journalists). The staff unions held ballots which produced large majorities in favour of strikes.

The walk-outs will take place for 24 hours on 23 May and 48 hours on 31 May and 1 June, with a fourth stoppage to be announced to create the "greatest amount of disruption" possible.

In a statement The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain said that it supported the views of the BBC staff unions.

The Guild deplores the 15 per cent across-the-board cuts because they are bound to have a bad effect on the production of drama, sitcom, sketch shows and other genres that involve Guild members.

Virtually all Guild self-employed freelancers rather than employees. Therefore the Guild was not involved in the strike ballots and is not officially part of the unions' "Fight for our BBC" campaign. Under trade union legislation it would be wrong for the Guild to instruct or encourage members to withdraw their labour.

However, Guild General Secretary Bernie Corbett said: “I hope Guild members will show maximum possible support for the staff unions when they take strike action. The dates are known in advance, so if Guild members have meetings or appointments planned for those days, I hope they will rearrange them.

"If they have deadlines on those days, I hope they will refrain from submitting material while staff are on strike – whether this means submitting it a day early or a day late. Many producers and managers will be on strike themselves, so Guild members should consider discussing with them in advance how they can react to the strike situation.

"The minute any Guild member thinks there is a serious problem, they should ring me at the Guild office and I will advise them how to proceed. Also, there are likely to be picket lines at most BBC premises. I would encourage Guild members to join the picket lines if they can, and show their solidarity with the BBC staff. After all, we all want to preserve the best possible public service broadcasting service for our country.”

An Englishman (and his dog) in Brooklyn

For a debut novel that pays tribute to the wonderful power of books, it seems only fitting that the Writers' Guild meets its author on National Library Day. 'National' in this case meaning 'American'. English writer Wesley Stace lives in brownstone Brooklyn. His novel Misfortune is published in the U.K. by Jonathan Cape on May 19. On May 29, Stace appears at the Hay-on-Wye festival, which calls his book a "vivid Gothic masterpiece".

On the day of the interview, a book review in the New York Times calls 18th-century bawdy London a "precursor of our own ambiguous times." Hm. Ambiguous maybe in the sense that American libraries are reporting book-lending stats to the FBI. But a few gay guys on a mission to give the country a make-over or people running out of acronyms to pigeonhole themselves into a sexual category hardly make for bawdiness. In America, sex is a competitive sport. Pleasure doesn't seem relevant, which it was for those 18th-century Clerkenwell barmaids.

Real sexual freedom is the main theme of Misfortune, whose protagonist(e) Rose is raised as a girl by the richest man in 19th England and a surrogate librarian mother. When she hits puberty, the father prefers not to face reality - but after a soul-searching trip to Narcissus-land in a mythic Hellenic part of Turkey, Rose decides to stick to her guns.

Wesley Stace: "Believer magazine published this phenomenal article about the Michigan's Womyn Festival that only women are allowed to attend. Five years ago, they threw out transsexuals, who went on to start Camp Trans. It's like civil war between the two, which is the saddest thing, if you think that's what the sexual revolution and gay rights have led to. Rose would find all that insane. Not because she's old-fashioned, but because of her character.
In this huge world where everything is permissible, everything is still very much pigeonholed. In fact its getting worse pigeonholed, because things are easier to describe and you can find exactly what you want on the internet. Twenty years ago, you would have a hard time finding American fans of English football. Now you can even find the people in New York who support Arsenal."

Misfortune grew out of the ballad Miss Fortune that Wesley Stace wrote for his alter ego John Wesley Harding, as part of his long-standing career as a singer/songwriter with a loyal American fanbase. That was eight years ago. How did it grow into a 544 p. novel?

WS: "I never wrote more than a hundred pages of my other novels. They were all set in the present, they were very memoir-ish and I didn't enjoy writing any of them for even one word. When I was writing in the present tense [interrupts: "What was that?" His dog Grey is digging up something in the garden] I found myself continually distracted by things in the present. I would want to make fun of Diana Ross, Subarus, your iPod and celebrate them and talk about them. Starting this book I knew that I'd bitten off more than I could chew and that I would finish it. I knew it was going to take years. By setting it in the past, I could have a fictional character set in a completely blank space. Then I would start to get pictures in my head. Without all the distractions, I was able to let my characters talk about essential things: life, love, art, books, their relationships, their conflicts."

At times, Misfortune flirts with Dickens' epic swagger and Henry Fielding's verbosity, but ultimately, Rose's voice is strong, confident and contemporary. Early on, Stace, who feels "very much like an English writer', got a priceless bit of advice from Rick Moody.

WS: "He said: 'I'm giving you the exact advice you don't want to hear. This is not where American literature is at right now, so you need to finish it first, and make sure it's fully thought-out.' Misfortune is completely irrelevant to modern American literature. I might have more in common with women writers, like Anne Patchett or Katherine Dunne who write larger books. If you compared that to the thin books written by men who must have agonised over every single word...My book is written in the spirit of: 'I have a big story to tell, let's tell the story'."

Updated theatre rates

The updated minimum rates for theatre writers working under either Theatre Management Association (TMA) or Theatre National Committee (TNC) rates have been published.

Both have been increased in accordance with inflation. Full details are available from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

Authors peak at 50

The cult of youth is over. Or it should be. New research from American company Lulu, reported by BBC News, has revealed that the average age of writers who topped the hardback fiction section of the New York Times Bestseller List from 1955-2004 was 50.5 years.

Fighting back against the critics

The dangerous proximity of critics and practitioners in the theatre, by Dominic Dromgoole in The Guardian.

There is hardly any art form that enforces such proximity between practitioner and critic as the theatre. Film critics skulk into viewing rooms in the morning; literary critics flop on to sofas at home with the latest novel; art critics stalk around galleries at their leisure. It's only the theatre that forces everyone to sit in the same room, all contributing to the same event. I have great friends whom I have seen less often over the past 10 years than I have seen Michael Billington. Which is as good an argument as any for not working in the theatre. The proximity makes for passion.

Sony Radio Award winners

The Vladimir Nabokov story, Laughter In The Dark, dramatised by Craig Higginson, has won the Gold Award for drama at the annual . Sony Radio Academy Awards Produced by Catherine Bailey, directed by Maria Aitken and with sound design by Howard Davidson, it starred Geraldine Alexander, Roger Allam, Sarah Badel, Ewan Bailey, Lauren Bird, Alan Cox, Tom George, Claire Price, David Shaw Parker
and Tracy Wiles

The judges commented that:

"Maria Aitken's beautifully crafted and paced production of this lesser-known Nabokov tale drew a brilliant performance from Roger Allam, strongly supported by every member of the cast. The atmosphere of cruelty, sleaze and menace was almost palpable, making this a gripping listen."

Laughter In The Dark was made by Catherine Bailey Productions for BBC Radio 3

The Silver Award went to The Permanent Way, by David Hare. (Producer: Catherine Bailey, director: Max Stafford-Clark)

Bronze went to Banana Republic, by Greig Coetzee (Produced and directed by Claire Grove).

Comedy Awards

The Gold Award for comedy The National Theatre Of Brent’s Complete And Utter History
Of The Mona Lisa, written by Patrick Barlow.
- Producers: Bruce Hyman & Helen Chattwell
- Director: Martin Duncan
- Editor: Jake Roberts
- Performers: Patrick Barlow as Desmond Olivier Dingle, John Ramm as Raymond Box
- Additional material: John Ramm & Martin Duncan

The judges commented that

"The National theatre Of Brent continue their singular pursuit of turning the historical into the hysterical. A very funny, very different, beautifully observed and, on occasion delightfully informative romp through the story of the world's most iconic piece of art."

The National Theatre Of Brent’s Complete And Utter History Of The Mona Lisa was an Above the Title productions for Radio 4.

The Silver Award went to The 99p Challenge, written Kevin Cecil, Andy Riley, Tony Roche and Jon Holmes. (Producer and directed by David Tyler)

The Bronze Award went to Clare In The Community, written by Harry Venning & David Ramsden. (Produced and directed by Katie Tyrell)

Novelists in pods

In New York three novelists have taken residence in special pods where they will write in full view of the public. There's a full report in

The New York Times.No cameras will record this voyeuristic experiment, though visitors can peep occasionally (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m). The potential for public humiliation comes not from the perils of constant surveillance, but from the more familiar writers' problem of failing to meet a deadline. Make that deadlines. They will give weekly readings of their works in progress on Saturdays at 8 p.m., and take part in two public discussions scheduled for this coming Sunday and May 22.

Coronation Street wins best soap

Coronation Street was awarded best soap at The British Soap Awards last night, reports BBC News. Long-time Street writer John Stephenson was given a special achievement award.

25 Words or Less: Director’s Cut

There's an interesting piece in the latest issue of Scriptwriter magazine about a new initiative from the UK Film Council - 25 Words or Less: Director's Cut.

Previous 25 Words or Less contests have invited writers to submit pitches for films in certain genres. This time they have asked two leading directors, Danny Boyle and John Crowley, to set the briefs.

The title of "25 Words or Less" is slightly misleading, in fact. You also have to submit a one-page outline and ten pages of script. Writers must be Full Members of the Writers' Guild or have an agent in order to apply.

The Film Council's Development Fund, with the respective director and production partner, will select two writers to receive funding: one to work with Danny Boyle and Pathe UK and one to work with John Crowley and Intermedia UK.

Development funding of £10,000 will be offered to each successful writer to cover a first draft original script and one set of revisions based on the story idea.

The closing date for applications is 11 July 2005.

AuthorHouse launches new partnership with Waterstone's

Self-publishing company, AuthorHouse UK, have announced a new partnership with high street retailer Waterstone's.

Through this partnership, AuthorHouse will provide Waterstone's Self-Publishing Packages which includes, among other things, guaranteed shelf space for self-published authors in Waterstone's flagship store at 311 Oxford Street in London, England.

"Big publishers do not have the monopoly on good books," said Scott Pack, Buying Manager for Waterstone's. "Some of the most exciting books we see nowadays are from small independent publishers or self-published authors."

Customers shopping Waterstone's will notice a new "Self-Published" book section which will display and sell authors' books being published through the AuthorHouse UK/Waterstone's partnership. Self-published authors will have their books stocked a minimum of eight weeks, giving Waterstone's buyers a chance to see how their book sells.

"Retail distribution for any author, especially self-published authors, has always been a challenge, " added Bryan Smith, President and CEO of AuthorHouse. "Our authors have complete control over the look, size, release time, royalties and now, retail distribution of their books."

The announcement comes less than a month after Amazon.com's purchase of self-publisher BookSurge.

Is the self-publishing industry coming of age?

Translators recognised by Man Booker International Prize

A special translators award of £15,000 will be given as part of the Man Booker International Prize 2005, reports The Guardian.

The move has been inspired partly by the judges arriving at a final shortlist in which 10 of the 17 authors wrote in other languages. The winning author would have got £60,000, with nothing, until now, for the translator.

"The judges became increasingly aware of the huge role translators play," said their chairman, John Carey.

Among those in line for the inaugural prize are the translators of Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Milan Kundera, Stanislaw Lem, Naguib Mahfouz, Tomas Eloy Martínez and Kenzaburo Oe. The winning author decides which translator gets the prize, with discretion to split it among several translators.

Edinburgh strike threat

Workers at the King’s and Festival Theatres are being balloted on strike action following seven months of wrangling over job cuts. Talks between management and unions broke down over two compulsory redundancies at the council-owned theatres, which are run by a joint trust, Festival City Theatres Trust.

Strike action could hit the theatres during the Edinburgh Festival this summer. The full story is in The Scotsman.

Brooklyn Books

Brooklyn's brownstone enclave of Park Slope seems to be particularly favoured by writers. Gourmet bread, design furniture, chai lattes and of course bookstores are staples on the main drag, 7th Avenue. Its London equivalent would be Crouch End, with a hint of Hampstead (Prospect Park!).

So when local author David Grand found out that the city-run school (PS 107) frequented by his sons didn't have sufficient funds for a library, he decided to tap into some of Brooklyn's natural resources. Teaming up with the school and 7th Avenue's Community Bookstore, he organised a sold-out series of four readings by Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Gary Shteyngart and Darin Strauss.

Less than 100 of NYC's 650 elementary schools have functioning libraries and 60% of New York City's public school students in grades 3 through 8 are reading below grade level. At least PS 107 doesn't have to worry about that anymore. The sold-out series has been enough to fund a $ 35,000 library (including furniture, computers and a librarian).

The May 3rd reading featured Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan Safran Foer. The following Q&A was moderated by Vanity Fair editor Elissa Schappell. Since most of the audience seemed to consist of (aspiring) writers, the discussion focussed on craft-related issues.

Q: What is the most important quality a writer should have?
JSF: When I was in college, Joyce Carol Oates told me that a writer should have energy. I've been thinking a lot about Saul Bellow and the energy in each of his sentences, in his books in his whole career. I've only written two books, but it's starting to feel like a Monster Truck Ball; the further you get, the more you have to carry. It's kind of painful. Even keeping parts of your own personality to yourself takes energy.
JL: The one trait I relate to is curiosity. Writing has opened up the world to me. I'm not an immigrant - I came to Boston from London when I was two - but want to know what my parents went through. Most of my protagonists are men because I want to know what it's like to be one. To care about someone enough that you would want to go into their head, that's where the compassion is.

Q: Do you have any special fetish to get you into a writing mode?
JSF: When I was writing my second novel in the New York Public Library, I would listen to Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You on my iPod. I don't even like that song, but it helped me get my subconscious to a place where I would be more receptive.

Q: What's the editing process like for you?
JL: I'm always editing. I was editing even as I was reading the story to you, because it's unpublished and fairly new and I'm keen to get the best possible version out. Somehow in my head a story gets started. Then I usually clear the mess in my work until I think at least it's readable for a few people. Then when I get their feedback I do a few more drafts. There are days when I scrawl something on a piece of paper, maybe that could be considered the writing part, but I don't really distinguish between writing and editing.

Re-working Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

If you liked the big screen version of Hitchhiker's the man who deserves some of the praise (as well, obviously, as original author Douglas Adams) is US scriptwriter Karey Kirkpatrick. And if you didn't like it, then he's probably the man to blame! He's interviewed by Denis Faye for The Writers Guild of America, west

Primarily, it [Douglas Adam's original feature script] was missing a middle, a second act. It was missing things you'd expect, like an active central protagonist with an emotional arc. It's a hard piece of material to weave that into because it started as a series of sketches in a radio play that were turned into a book. A lot of its charm is in how verbose it is and its wordplay, so in that way, it'd sort of be a Monty Python movie, but you can't do that for the amount of money it takes to realize this kind of material. I think that was the thing that was preventing it from ever getting made.

What sci-fi writers think of Star Wars

Think science fiction writers would love Star Wars? Think again, says The New York Times.

One problem with Star Wars, science fiction writers say, is that it is not, ultimately, concerned with science, but rather with a timeless vision of good and evil. Mr. Lucas has said that his story, especially the journeys of his central characters from innocence through trials by fire to wisdom and acceptance, were rooted in Joseph Campbell's comparative studies of world mythologies, and especially in his popular book, "The Hero With a Thousand Faces."

What Mr. Lucas may have seen as eternal, however, science fiction writers have tended to see as antique.

"It started out 30 years behind," said Ursula K. Le Guin. "Science fiction was doing all sorts of thinking and literary experiments on a totally different plane. 'Star Wars' was just sort of fun."

"It takes these very stock metaphors of empire in space and monstrously bad people and wonderfully good people and plays out a bunch of stock operatic themes in space suits," she said. "You can do it with cowboy suits as well."

Science fiction, on the other hand, "is a set of metaphors," Ms. Le Guin said. "It's useful for thinking about certain things in our lives - if society was different in some way, what would it be like?"

Critic turns soap writer

Guardian (free registration required) TV critic Rupert Smith was challenged by Mal Young to write an episode of Doctors. The result can be seen tomorrow...

Understanding the mechanics of TV drama doesn't mean I've become a more charitable critic. If anything, it's made me less inclined to stomach some of the drivel I'm obliged to sit through in my day job. Producers set themselves very high standards, and if those apply to a daytime show like Doctors, they must be doubly important to primetime material. Internal consistency, economy of character, situation and dialogue, the sense of an ending - they're the qualities the Greeks were keen on, and they still rule today. There's a lot of awful TV drama out there that might be improved considerably, if only it didn't trample so gaily over the lot of them.

Tribeca Hooligans

When Elijah Wood was done with Lord of the Rings, he wanted to do something very different. So he signed up for a gritty indie film in which he gets to kick the living daylights out of Man U supporters. Screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, Hooligans is the powerful debut of Lexi Alexander, a former kickboxing champ from Germany who went to LA to become a filmmaker, doing stuntwork to pay for the bills. She took continuing education classes in directing at UCLA and made an Oscar-nominated short film about a boxer.

The average Newyorker's idea of team rivalry is shouting Boston sucks!!! at a baseball game, while downing tepid Bud Lites. No matter how much Yankees fans pretend to hate the BoSox, they will happily squeeze into the same subway car on the way down from the Bronx. Not so in Europe.

Elijah Wood plays Matt Buckner, a talented journalism student who gets kicked out of Harvard through no fault of his own. He flees to London, where his sister lives with a banker-type, who farms out Matt to his kid brother. Through Matt's American eyes, Stateside audiences are introduced to the excitement that comes with football matches - and post-game recreation in the form of a West Ham firm. For those already familiar with football, the film is intruiging for the stylishly choreographed fight scenes, superb acting and the train wreck that is Matt's culture shock. Hooligans has been sold to most European countries, including the U.K., where UIP will release the film later this year.

Filmmaker Lexi Alexander has first-hand experience with firms, having been a member in her native Mannheim. They really didn't take girls, but since she was their kickbox teacher, they couldn't refuse. "The guys would get together on Wednesday evenings to figure out the map of the away-city. When you realise that all of these guys have normal jobs, but this is what they do on the weekends, right there you have a movie, because it's all about character."

Although she received full co-operation from West Ham United, Lexi had less-than-great experiences with the London authorities when it came to shooting there. "They're not really friendly to independent filmmakers. If they do let you shoot, you have to pay a lot of money. They're not as infatuated with the film world; they couldn't care less. When I was shooting my short film in Alabama, the senator would send the local pizzerias to feed us and he would come on the set to ask me what else I needed. That kind of thing could not happen in London." Indeed. The idea of Ken Livingston doling out kebabs on a film set in Southwark seems positvely far-fetched.

The film's producer Deborah del Prete generously gave Lexi an executive producer credit. "My business partner and I like to support female talent. I had been to London and seen the excitement around soccer, but I never realised it was organised around formal groups. Lexi's script gave me an insight in how young males could be sucked into that violence. I have a teenage son and I was always wondering, 'how do guys get involved in that?' So the film is really a cautionary tale."

Update from Tom (03/05/05): The original script for Hooligans was written by Guild member Dougie Brimson.