Alan Mahar (born 1949) is an English writer and publisher.
Born in Liverpool, Mahar studied at the University of London before moving to Birmingham in 1976, working at Solihull College and living first in Sparkhill and then in Moseley. [1]
He was a founder of the Tindal Street Fiction Group in 1982, and of the Tindal Street Press, where he is now the publishing director, in 1998. [2]
His 1999 novel, Flight Patterns, tells the story of a French parachutist in Liverpool in 1957, while his 2002 second novel, After the Man Before, concerns urban renewal in 1980s Birmingham.
Mahar has had short stories published in journals including the London Magazine and Critical Quarterly . [2]
The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, known by his pen name Cecil Scott "C. S." Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare, such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars.
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer best known for his works published under the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Some of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids (1951), filmed in 1962, and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), which was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned, in 1995 under the same title, and again in 2022 in Sky Max under its original title.
Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was an English writer. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. She won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996, and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as a national treasure. In 2008, The Times named Bainbridge on their list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1963.
David John Lodge CBE FRSL is an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge has also written television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T. S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as Point of View, The Stream of Consciousness and Interior Monologue, beginning with Beginning and ending with Ending.
Tindal Street Press was a Birmingham-based independent publisher of contemporary literary fiction, with a particular focus on writers born, or living, in Birmingham and the West Midlands. According to its website, it was "a publicly funded organisation committed to providing a national and international platform for talented new writers from the English regions".
Stephen Lowe is an English playwright and director.
Lawrence Scott FRSL is a novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad and Tobago, who divides his time between London and Port of Spain. He has also worked as a teacher of English and Drama at schools in London and in Trinidad. Scott's novels have been awarded (1998) and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and thrice nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. His stories have been much anthologised and he won the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award in 1986.
Peter Berresford Ellis is a British historian, literary biographer, and novelist who has published over 98 books to date either under his own name or his pseudonyms Peter Tremayne and Peter MacAlan. He has also published 100 short stories. Under Peter Tremayne, he is the author of the international bestselling Sister Fidelma historical mystery series. His work has appeared in 25 languages.
Leonard Alfred George Strong was a popular English novelist, critic, historian, and poet, and published under the name L. A. G. Strong. He served as a director of the publishers Methuen Ltd. from 1938 to 1958.
Nicholas Royle is an English novelist, editor, publisher, literary reviewer and creative writing lecturer.
Berlie Doherty is an English novelist, poet, playwright and screenwriter. She is best known for children's books, for which she has twice won the Carnegie Medal. She has also written novels for adults, plays for theatre and radio, television series and libretti for children's opera.
Profile Books is a British independent book publishing firm founded in 1996. It publishes non-fiction subjects including history, biography, memoir, politics, current affairs, travel and popular science.
Maurice Denton Welch was a British writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions.
James Crace is an English novelist, playwright and short story writer. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999, Crace was born in Hertfordshire and has lectured at the University of Texas at Austin. His novels have been translated into 28 languages—including Norwegian, Japanese, Portuguese and Hebrew.
The literary tradition of Birmingham originally grew out of the culture of religious puritanism that developed in the town in the 16th and 17th centuries. Birmingham's location away from established centres of power, its dynamic merchant-based economy and its weak aristocracy gave it a reputation as a place where loyalty to the established power structures of church and feudal state were weak, and saw it emerge as a haven for free-thinkers and radicals, encouraging the birth of a vibrant culture of writing, printing and publishing.
The Rubery International Book Award is the largest cash award for books published by independent publishers and self published authors in Great Britain. The London Review of Books described it as "independent publishing's response to the Booktrust and the Orange Prize. The Alliance of Independent Authors describes the award as: 'holders of the respected Rubery Award [...] should be considered to have a quality endorsement.'
Julia Bell is a British novelist and poet living in North London. She is Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck and the founder and Project Director of the annual publication the Mechanics’ Institute Review and the website "Writers Hub".
Annie Murray is an English writer, best known for series about women and children in war time and for her bestselling novels featuring the Cadbury factory in Bournville, Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter and many others. Her novel, Where Earth Meets Sky (2007), was nominated for Romantic Historical Novel of the Year for the Romantic Novelists Association. Her latest novel, Secrets of the Chocolate Girls was published in April 2022.
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