Themes
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Censorship Today SHOULD FREEDOM OF SPEECH EVER HAVE LIMITS? Freedom of speech is not only under threat in undemocratic countries: the American Library Association received challenges to ban no fewer than 326 book titles in 2010, including And Tango Makes Three, which attracted complaints because its young penguin hero has two fathers. |
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The Future of the Novel WILL THE NOVEL REMAIN WRITERS' FAVOURITE NARRATIVE FORM? Has the dominant literary form of the 19th and 20th centuries grown stale? Is it no longer the best means of delivering stories in the 21st century? Or does the classic literary novel remain the form best placed to deliver innovative, memorable writing? |
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A National Literature NATIONALITY AND IDENTITY IN THE NOVEL TODAY Since the first Edinburgh Writers' Conference in 1962, there has been a renaissance in Scottish literature, bringing the voices of Scottish people of different backgrounds into ground-breaking novels by writers such as James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway and A L Kennedy among many others. Have there been similarly powerful developments in the 'national literatures' of other countries? |
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Should Literature be Political? NOVELS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH CURRENT AFFAIRS The 1962 Writers' Conference organisers stated: 'Many believe that the novelist has the duty to further by his writing the causes in which he believes. Others think that literature must be above the problems of the day.' 50 years on, do writers remain divided about the role political events should play in novels? |
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Style vs Content HOW SHOULD AUTHORS APPROACH THE TASK OF WRITING A NOVEL TODAY? What is more important: the content of a novel or the style in which it is written? |
