For the first time in my writing career, I feel like I have a serious deadline. I feel like, finally, there are people out there in the world waiting for something, expecting me to produce. I have always been the type of person who responds well to the pressure of...

Big news! I will be interviewed on the popular Radio 4 show Excess Baggage by the fascinatingJohn McCarthy tomorrow....yes, that's tomorrow, Saturday 12 November at 10.00 am UK time. Very exciting and a bit scary, to be sure. I hope you can listen to it if you're home...

There's lots of changes chez Guiney of late. As many know, we've moved house after seventeen years and with that came a new neighbourhood and a very new and, actually, exciting lifestyle. There's also my new connection with SOAS as Writer-in-Residence in its...

I'm a great believer in celebrating success - especially in a job as rife with rejection as writing is. So whenever I or anyone I know is able to have a book published, I want to party! But like all good parties, book launches need planning, and the first question is...

The best thing I can do for today's blog is to point you in the direction of yesterday's mini-interview of Margaret Atwood in The Guardian. Every Saturday, they run a Q&A where they ask the same 25 questions. Her answers are the best I've ever seen. My favourites...

If that doesn't make for the perfect 24 hours, then I don't know what does. Wednesday evening I sat on a panel for Cambridge's Festival of Ideas discussing such questions as what gives a writer or scientist credibility? Do facts exist? What is the responsibility of a...

Now this is an event I'm really thrilled to be a part of.The Cambridge Festival of !deas is in the midst of it's third year as the only free arts, humanities and social sciences festival in the UK. Last year it attracted over 9,000 visitors to over 180 events, and...

I lived in Connecticut over thirty years ago. I have lots of good associations with the State, but it actually has seemed very far away over the past years. I associate Connecticut with leafy suburbs and sensible lifestyles - a far cry from the ultra-urban life I've...

It's been a busy couple of days.Two book signings. Two books to be signed. Two very different venues and very different audiences.At the Grolier Poetry BookshopFriday afternoon at The Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square. This is a wonderful, old-style bookshop....

Here I am, back in Boston. I'm here to see my beloved Number 2 Son and hang around with The Big D while he goes to some meetings. Then next weekend, I'm off to Washington D.C. to go to the wedding of my friend's daughter. So given that schedule, I have done what an...

When people generally think about how writing is taught they tend to think of workshops, small rooms filled with large handfuls of students sitting around tables doing exercises suggested by a tutor. I often teach that way as well. But the teaching I'm now beginning...

This week I had my first official event as Writer-in -Residence at SOAS. I hosted a public reading by the Malaysian fiction writer and poet, Shivani Sivagurunathan. Shivani read from her recently published short story collection, Wildlife on Coal Island. I loved this...

I have lived in the UK for over twenty years now, and still I'm occasionally caught out by subtle differences between my adopted country and the country of my birth -- or even more to the point here, my adolescence -- the US. Growing up in the States  and specifically...

credit to blog_corporate.gifToday I had lunch with one of the first friends I ever made in the blogosphere, Jennie from Tea Stains. The fact that she was an expat, a Brit and living in Thailand, a part of the world I was already falling in love with, immediately drew...

Poets are wonderful creatures. There's a marvellous subversive element to our collective consciousness, and when we feel threatened or taken for granted, as we so often do, we rise up and make our voices heard. Yesterday's new poetry festival held in London's Exmouth...

I will be very brief here because I'd love for you to go there, to a column organised by the fiction writer Lauri Kubitsile called The Writer's Room. Lauri has asked several writers including Jenny Robson, Cheryl Ntumy,Wame Molefhe, Beatrice Lamwaka, Gothataone Moeng,...

I love giving readings, but there's something about Dublin that makes it even more special. The city oozes literature. There are statues of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde to stumble upon on both sides of the river. The Abbey and the Gate theatres sit on their streets...

Nearly a year ago to the day, Ward Wood Publishing launched its first book, a captivating new novel by an extraordinarily talented writer (ahem) otherwise known as A Clash of Innocents by Sue Guiney. Since then they have published a mix of poetry and fiction, with a...

Someone recently asked me to name five places I like to go to write, places that lure me outside of my office but still get the job done. I'm finding it harder to think of than I thought, because where I go so much depends on where I am at the time and what I'm...

I'm not ready to stop thinking about the summer, I suppose, because I'm not yet home or whatever it is my new home will turn out to be. But as I head into the autumn this week, I'll take one last loving look on the summer, and specifically, some of the excellent books...

Well, maybe not really, but at times it certainly seemed like it. The summer of 2011 was:* an earthquake* England on fire* a hurricane* Poetry Society hysteria * everything that could go wrong with a house sale that's possible* aborted work attemptsBut it was also:*...

It's the end of July. I've spent a few weeks here in my quasi-summer, doing a lot of work, seeing some family and friends, eating seafood, making occasional trips to the beach, all the while continuing to worry about London real estate woes and future events. In a...

I love it when writers respond to other art forms. Over the past few years I've seen exhibits and books which show the interplay between painting and poetry, stories and photography, plays and music. Any art form can be used successfully as inspiration and it shows me...

I'm thinking about time, as I always do when I'm on this island. I've spent as much of my summers here as possible over the past 30 years, and in all that time, some things have changed but much hasn't. Every now and again a favourite shop or bakery closes or a new...

Titles are hard. Very. They have to do so many things at once. They have to give an idea of what the book is about, without giving too much of an idea. They have to show what genre the book falls into. Have you ever noticed how different genres have different sorts of...

I love the way summer makes me think of books as much as beach. The whole idea of summer reading reminds me of childhood exploration and the realization that an entire new world could exist within a collected sheaf of papers. I remember my first really great summer...

A quickie today.....the lovely and uber-energetic writer, Helen Hunt, has asked me to write a little something for the book review site Bookersatz. Her wish was my command.  Please do go check it out here. Without giving it away, I'll just say it's about a book that...

I'm not sure what sort of a post this will turn out to be. I'm jet-lagged to beat the band, and the trip eastward coming on the heels of lots of stressful nights due to our real estate wars has made me feel...well...pretty discombobulated. You know how sometimes you...

I've been thinking all week about whether I wanted to write a post or not about the latest upheaval among the members of the UK's Poetry Society. I purposely try to steer clear of things political on my blog because my readers are from all over the globe, they span...

"...oh, when I'm home again in England and I'm thinking of you..."Tuesday night I went to a lifesaver of a concert. It's been a bit stressful chez Guiney lately and Tuesday was particularly bad. But the day ended, the evening began and I found myself in the audience...