Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of the late Terry Pratchett who has recently completed her father’s book The Shepherd’s Crown for publication in August, has revealed that there will be no further works in the Discworld series. She has announced that no other writer will be given permission to continue the series either, keeping the series as it is completely ‘sacred’ to Terry Pratchett’s legacy.
In other book news:
The publisher And Other Stories has announced its intention to only publish books by female authors in a planned call to action for 2018. Kamila Shamsie, who provoked discussion in The Guardian by highlighting the dearth of female authors winning big awards, and the lack of female literary characters leading the winning works, inspired the small press to make this bold promise.
Twentieth-century modernist writer Katherine Mansfield, best known today for her short stories including The Garden Party, Bliss and more, is not as well remembered for her poetry. However, a senior lecturer at the University of Northampton has now discovered a collection of 30 poems by the author that were hidden away in Chicago’s Newberry Library. Gerri Kimber, the lecturer and president of the Katherine Mansfield Society, discovered the poems while looking through previously checked, though falsely recorded material. The poems were overlooked as being previously published writings, but Kimber quickly realised that they were all, in fact, fresh works.
Beginning on the 11 September and ending on the 20th, the 125th anniversary International Agatha Christie Festival is going to be held in the crime writer’s Devonshire birthplace of Torquay. In a ingenious turn by the organisers, the festival will include a cookery demonstration in Agatha Christie’s kitchen, in which French writer Anne Martinetti will be preparing and showing various (suspicious) recipes from Christie’s works.