John Baker’s Blog

Poets, by tradition, imagine themselves likely to die young. But that’s not a matter of imagination alone. Marc Abrahams in The Education Guardian reports on the research of Associate Professor James C Kaufman, of California State University at San Bernardino:
Kaufman looked at the lives and deaths of 1,987 deceased writers from four different cultures: American, [...]

The Hostile Media Phenomenon. It’s a psychological term for the way the opinionated react to negative reviews of Apple products and which also explains the enormous divide between the pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian lobbies.
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WF Frederick has a list of 10 Social Media Sites specifically for writers. Go look up Shelfari, Scribophile, Issuu and Ficlets.
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Copy write versus [...]

20th March 2003 – 5.30 am: the American army and its allies bombard Baghdad. The War in Iraq has started. The blood and ink flow in abundance. Five years later, we, as writers, are sending a message to the people. We would like to appeal to each and every one of you and make you [...]

I was at the National Railway Museum yesterday to formally launch the opening of the York Literature Festival.
The festival runs from the 1st to the 15th March. Although not on the scale of Cheltenham or Edinburgh, there is a varied programme on offer, mainly involving local writers and readers, of whom there are many. Among [...]