Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

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Cormac McCarthy

PEN America releases comprehensive survey on race in publishing (This week in books)

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This week! Books! PEN America released a wide-ranging survey of over 60 publishing employees on the paltry state of diversification and cultural change within the publishing industry when it comes to race, exploring “a host of historically underexplored financial and institutional factors that feed into underrepresentation across the industry,” and pointing to publishers’ “persistent obstacles […]

Cormac McCarthy has two new novels (This week in books)

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This week! Books! Cormac McCarthy has been quiet since The Road was published in 2006 (and no, he’s not on Twitter), but at 88 he has two new novels on the way this fall. Retention of employees from diverse backgrounds has long been a problem in the publishing industry, and We Need Diverse Books is […]

What makes a great setting in a novel

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The Reading Rainbow theme song really had it right. One of the best parts of reading is the way books open up new worlds to us, whether a story is set in an unpronounceable ancient kingdom, the far reaches of outer space, ancient history, the distant future, or even the real world but maybe somewhere […]

Cormac McCarthy is not on Twitter (This week in books)

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This week! Books! After the sudden death of longtime Scholastic CEO Richard Robinson, there’s now a succession drama surrounding his estate that’s worthy of, well, HBO’s Succession. This would be merely the stuff of tabloids, and not fit for the esteemed halls of This Week in Books, except that control of a $1.2 billion publisher […]

This Week in Publishing 5/14/10

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This week in………. TYRA MAIL! Screeeeeammmm!!!!!!! Yes, it has finally happened. Tyra Banks. Novelist. The model/talk show host/judge-of-fierceness has smized her way to a book deal for a YA novel called “Modelland,” involving a land populated by “Intoxibellas,” who are, of course, hot and fierce and will cry dramatically if you ask them about the […]

How to craft a great voice

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Voice is one of the most difficult writing terms to define and pinpoint. We might know it when we see it, but what’s voice made of, really? You hear so often that agents and editors want “new voices” and “compelling voices” and voice voice voice. So what is voice? How do you cultivate it? And […]