from ABC News

Writers festival boss welcomes Frey controversy

By Rebekah van Druten

A Million Little Pieces author James Frey admits taking liberties to make the story better. (Getty Images: Andrew H Walker, file photo)

• Map: Brisbane 4000

The organiser of this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival has defended his decision to include controversial author James Frey in the line-up.

Frey is best known for his 2003 memoir A Million Little Pieces. Promoted as a true tale of his time in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, it rocketed up bestseller lists the world over after Oprah Winfrey selected it for her bookclub.

But in 2005, The Smoking Gun website outed Frey for having highly embellished and partially made up large parts of the book.

The scandal raised questions about whether memoirs have to be factually true; artistic director Michael Campbell says these questions can and should be discussed at writers’ festivals.

“First and foremost, he [Frey] is a terrific writer … Even just prior to Oprah getting upset with him live on air, she commended his writing,” Campbell said.

“And I think one of the most interesting areas of writing at the moment is this, sort of, line between fact and fiction. We’ve seen it here in Australia over a number of years through the ‘history wars’. In that sort of context it’s been about the making of history; the story of history. It’s been about how you bring about the ‘facts’ or ‘accounts’ and how you give them a certain amount of weight or not, how you draw connections between different facts and how you bring that together to get a story of history.

“Then once you come to memoir, there’s an awful lot of quite innovative writing about revealing yourself; about what you chose to say and reveal and what you chose to keep hidden. How you do that, how you present that.”

Frey doesn’t deny he took artistic liberties with A Million Little Pieces, but the author also doesn’t feel he did anything wrong.

“I wrote a book that I said for years should be considered literature; should be considered art. Frankly, I’m the first and really the only memoirist to be held to this standard,” Frey told ABC News Online.

“The presidential candidates in America who have both written memoirs that have been proven to have the same issues in them as mine had are not being held to the standard that I’ve been held to.

“The media seems to have some sort of double standard - where it’s ok for some people to do things, but it’s not ok for others … It’s a book, it’s a work of art and it’s a piece of literature. I took liberties in making the story better. There are many things in the book that are toned down, but again the media isn’t interested in that. They’re interested in frankly holding me to a standard that they don’t hold themselves to.

“If you look in the average newspaper on the average day, there’s as many lies in it as there are in any of my books. There’s as many embellishments and fabrications, and I think people who aren’t seeing that are very naive.”

Frey rebukes suggestions that readers of A Million Little Pieces may have felt betrayed or duped by him, and says he’s expecting a warm reception at the Brisbane Writers Festival.

“I know I get a lot of letters from Australian readers who have been very, very supportive of me. And I think it’ll probably, hopefully be like it is in most places - people have been moved by the words that I write and they understand that I create art, that I create literature and that I have taken liberties along the way to do that,” he said.

New work

As well as discussing the genres of memoir and biography at the festival, Frey will be promoting his third novel - Bright Shiny Morning, the story of four lost souls living in Los Angeles.

So far, it has not been received well by the critics. David L Ulin, a reviewer for the LA Times, says it’s one of the worst books he’s ever read.

Frey takes the criticism on the chin, saying his only concern is how his readers receive the book.

“The reviews tend to be either really great reviews or really, really terrible reviews. And frankly, if they [the critics] are judging me based on the past they’re not doing their jobs, because journalists are supposedly objective. You know, this is just another indication that they’re not,” he said.

“If they want to shred the book, so be it.

“What matters to me is how my readers feel about the book, how the people who spend their money and their time with the book feel about it - and so far that response has been great.”

And despite his very public dressing down, it seems Frey hasn’t lost his sense of humour - yet.

Bright Shiny Morning starts with the declaration nothing in the novel should be considered as “accurate or reliable”.

“It’s meant to be a joke. It’s meant to be a statement of defiance,” Frey said.

“It’s meant to say that I make the rules and that you can get mad at me for doing something but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing it, and it doesn’t mean I’m going to follow your rules.

“I don’t think that rules should be imposed on works of art or works of literature, you know. Artists should be allowed to do whatever they want, however they want and call it whatever they want.”

The Brisbane Writers Festival starts tomorrow and runs till September 21.

[ click to read at ABC.net.au ]

from UntitledBooks.com

James Frey
Friday, September 05, 2008

James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, My Friend Leonard, and the new Bright Shiny Morning, tells us how he writes.

Where are you right now?  

Amagansett, NY. At my desk.

Where do you write?

Sometimes here, sometimes New York City. Have desks in both places. Sometimes I sit on a couch in front of the TV.

How do you write?

Just sit down and work. Focus on one sentence at a time. Never self-edit, never go back. I don’t use outlines figure everything out as I go.

What keeps you writing?

I love it, and it’s my job.

Who do you write for?

For myself, and for the readers who support me.

Do you discuss your work with anyone?

Not really. At least not while I’m writing something. I end up discussing it when it’s finished because that’s part of the job.

How do you know if your work is good?

I just believe it is.

Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?

Hundreds.

Which book do you wish you’d written?

A Season in Hell, by Arthur Rimbaud

What is your literary guilty pleasure?

Detective books. I love detective books. Chandler, Hammett, Spillane, Simenon.

Which writer made you want to write?

Many, but Henry Miller probably had the most influence. He lit me up. Still does.

Who’s the most exciting author writing today?

Most are pretty boring. I’d probably say Michel Houellebecq. One of the few who invites controversy, instead of hiding from it.

If you weren’t writing you’d be…?

No idea. Can’t imagine another life.

What next?

The Final Testament of the Holy Bible. And I’m not joking.

[ click to visit Untitled Books ]

from the Sydney Morning Herald

James Frey is back to merge fact with fiction

Itchy fingers … James Frey in Sydney this week. Photo: Peter Rae 

September 18, 2008

JAMES FREY’S fat, new novel, Bright Shiny Morning, carries an aggressive disclaimer: “Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable.” It’s fiction, so why does he need to remind us? Read on, though, and you encounter earnest historical snippets about the city of Los Angeles, inserted among the made-up lives of a closeted gay actor, a homeless alcoholic, a housekeeper and a runaway teenage couple. But beware. “It’s maybe 80 per cent true,” says Frey of his pseudo-history.

It is disorienting to learn, for example, that Howard Caughy, who bought LA’s first automobile and died in a crash three weeks later, is a confection named after a friend of Frey. And that three of the four gangs in the city’s first gang war in 1906 are made up.

This mixing of fact, fiction and faction is a clever joke on readers and, even more, on the media. “I did it very deliberately to give the finger,” says Frey, drinking a double cappuccino during a brief stop in Sydney on his way to the Brisbane Writers’ Festival.

Fifteen years after his last drink, he still has the intense, obsessive energy of the ex-addict.

Not everyone gets the joke. His US publisher, HarperCollins, made him sign a 40-page document detailing exactly which parts of the book were true and which weren’t. They have reason to be anxious.

Three years ago, Oprah Winfrey devoted her television book club to A Million Little Pieces, Frey’s 2003 memoir about a gruelling two months he spent in a rehab clinic recovering from a youth of alcoholism, drug addiction, violence and near-death. The book - already a bestseller - went on to sales of 6 million in the US, 8 million around the world and almost 100,000 in Australia. In the sequel, My Friend Leonard, he wrote about his return to “normal” life under protection from a Mafia boss.

Months after Winfrey’s tearful promotion, an investigative website exposed parts of Frey’s books as being fabricated to make him look tougher than he was. He had not spent three months in jail, it was a matter of hours. His role in a woman’s death was invented. Excruciating dentistry was not, as graphically described, done without drugs.

Winfrey demanded another appearance by Frey to confess and apologise. Labelled a liar, he was hounded by the media, dumped by his publisher, and hit with a class-action suit by “cheated” readers.

He retorted that he had tried to sell the book as fiction but Nan Talese, the respected Random House publisher, insisted memoir would sell better.

The books now appear with remorseful notes to readers, who continue to buy them in large numbers. A Million Little Pieces is “90 per cent true”, he says now; My Friend Leonard somewhat less.

To his credit, Frey has lifted his life out of chaos and kept on writing. He lives in New York’s SoHo with his wife, Maya, and their three-year-old daughter. His friends are artists, bankers and just a few writers. After a stint writing and directing in Hollywood, he prefers art essays and his own compelling brand of literature.

‘ “I had no intention of writing a book that would sell 100 copies and get a write-up in the local paper,” he says. “My goal was to be one of the most influential and most important writers of my time. I wanted my writing to be unlike anything that preceded it, devoid of influence, unique, new, fresh and reflective of the time we live in. I wasn’t a guy burning to tell my story of recovery; that was just the best story I had.”

Frey’s writing is instantly recognisable for its minute detail, repetitive sentences, minimal punctuation and incantatory rhythms, which he writes while listening to music. He dislikes labels such as “memoir” and “novel”, and rather sees his books as “art”. His literary heroes are rule-breakers such as Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski and Arthur Rimbaud. They blurred fact and fiction, he says, and all got “massacred”.

Frey admits he made mistakes. Still, he has emerged with his confidence intact. In the US he does stage appearances with rock bands and video screens. Young readers flock to his Facebook and MySpace pages.

“I’m just one of those punk kids on a skateboard trying to get into trouble,” he says. So, for his next trick, he is writing a book about a New Yorker who believes he is the Messiah. He calls it “the third book of the Bible”.
Is it all true? He gives me a challenging look and replies: “Were the first two?”

[ click to read at the Sydney Morning  Herald ]

from The Age

Enter the Frey

Michael Lallo
September 17, 2008

James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning proves his career is not in a million little pieces.

ON THE first page of Bright Shiny Morning is what appears to be a standard disclaimer: “Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable.”

But the author of this novel is James Frey, the drug addict turned “recovery super boy” who made Oprah very, very mad. Who was vilified by The New York Times. Who was hounded by reporters and denounced as a literary fraud for fictionalising parts of his memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Which is why those first 10 words are no ordinary disclaimer.

“That sentence is really just me raising my two middle fingers and saying ‘I’m going to do what I want and I’ll do it how I want’,” Frey says from his hotel room in Sydney. “And I don’t care what the people who believe it’s their job to decide what is and is not literature think.”

In any other writer, this couldn’t-give-a-damn attitude might seem contrived. But with Frey, it’s real — you don’t recover from a media crucifixion to write a critically acclaimed novel without a tough skin.

And Bright Shiny Morning is as bold as it is big. The sprawling, 500-page epic features dozens of characters, from a closeted film star to an alcoholic tramp. The central character, however, is the city of Los Angeles.

“Tolstoy did it with St Petersburg, Dickens did it with London and Hugo did it with Paris,” Frey says. “But nobody had even attempted it with LA. I think the film and entertainment industry looms very large over that place. Writers and artists from LA often struggle with it — how can you be serious but also be from the place where they made Iron Man?”

LA’s ritzy veneer is just one of its many facets explored by Frey, with the immigrant underclass, homeless drifters and suburban homemakers all fleshing out this portrait of a city.

Not surprisingly, it’s also the most heavily vetted book HarperCollins has ever published. Before it was released, Frey was ordered to verify every piece of historical trivia scattered throughout its pages. About three-quarters is factual and the rest he made up, leaving the reader to guess what’s real.

Although he spent two years writing it, Frey didn’t find a publisher until it was finished. His previous publisher dropped him after the A Million Little Pieces scandal erupted in 2006.

That scandal was briefly reported around the world, but in the United States it took on a life of its own. Even Dick Cheney shooting his pal in the face failed to knock Frey off the front pages. His crime, as revealed by The Smoking Gun website, was to have exaggerated or made up parts of his best-selling book about his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. The three months he spent in prison turned out to be three hours. He falsely presented himself as a victim of a real train crash that killed two girls. And there was no run-in with the Ohio police.

Frey isn’t the first memoirist to take creative liberties — but he is one of the few to have his work become an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Initially, the talk show queen stood by him, dismissing the furore as “much ado about nothing”. But when Oprah’s fans turned on her, she turned on Frey, hauling him onto her show to explain himself. Relentlessly, she interrogated and admonished him while the audience jeered. And now that Oprah was part of the story, every newspaper and television station in the country was covering it.

Does Frey suspect her about-face was actually motivated by a desire to save her own hide?

“You’d have to ask Oprah that,” he says. “I’m not going to speak for her.”

But he does believe the whole affair was little more than a beat-up. “It was totally media-driven,” he says. “The statistics of the (reader lawsuit) bear that out. Only 1700 of 4.5 million eligible people asked for their money back. If that’s my customer satisfaction ratio, I’m fine with that.”

And although the book was printed in more than 30 languages, not one of his international publishers dropped him. Still, the ordeal took its toll, forcing Frey to seek refuge in France for two months.

But judging by his next novel about a New York man who believes he is the messiah, he has no intention to play it safe.
“I want to explore how religion has been used and distorted in nasty ways,” he says. “Under Bush, we’ve seen the gradual erosion of the separation of church and state. I’m not going to let somebody who believes in a god that I don’t believe in tell me that I have to live my life in a certain way. The book is going to be a statement on religion and belief, and tolerance and intolerance.”

It’s easy to imagine that writing fiction must be liberating for Frey — although he’s not so sure.

“You know, I just write books. I didn’t approach Bright Shiny Morning any differently to any other book. My goal, every time I sit down, is to create a work of literary art. And whatever the publisher calls it — whatever they stick on the side — is irrelevant.”

James Frey will speak at 6.30pm tonight at Readings Hawthorn, 701 Glenferrie Road. Bookings: 9819 1917

[ click to read at TheAge.com.au ]

from the Guardian UK 

This much I know

James Frey, writer, 38, London 

• Interview by Stephanie Merritt
• The Observer, 
• Sunday September 14 2008

American author James Frey now lives in London. Photograph: Antonio Olmos

Since I was 24 or so, my goal has always been to be a great writer,to be one of the most influential, most controversial, most widely read literary figures of my time. The only ambition I have is to write great books or fail absolutely trying.

I’ve been in conflict with everything for my whole life. That’s the rule, not the exception. Conflict with myself over ideas of how to live and think, what to think, what to believe. My wife laughs and says I’m only comfortable when there’s a fight.

I’ve been sober for 15 years, so I’m pretty used to it. There are days I wish I could drink. You drink so you don’t have to feel something, and when you feel something deeply it can be difficult. Every day going through the Oprah scandal [Frey admitted fabricating sections of his memoir A Million Little Pieces on Oprah] I just wanted to make it go away, but if I started drinking or using again I would lose a whole lot else.

A Million Little Pieces is the most investigated book in American history. No other work of literature has been put under the microscope in the way that was – it was shocking.

I don’t believe in God or a higher power. I believe that you shouldn’t be allowed to impose morality on people because a book written several thousand years ago says so. My next book is about a secular Jew in New York who comes to believe he’s the Messiah. It’s my idea of what 
the Messiah would be like if he were alive today. It’s a very serious, very heavy book. 

During the Oprah stuff I called Brett Easton Ellis and said: ‘Dude, what do I do?’, and he laughed and said: ‘You have so far exceeded any of the messes I made that I can no longer give you advice.’ 

I don’t have any real interest in drinking in moderation.

I don’t think of Bright Shiny Morning as my starting out as a novelist. I would be naive to think that the past will be forgotten, but I hope it will eventually be seen as part of a larger body of work that explores questions of fact and fiction and do they matter.

I walk down the street in America and I get stopped all the time; I get recognised a lot. I talk to readers on the street, and I’ve never had one say anything bad to me or attack me.

I think the problem is with the genre. Memoir is a corrupt genre – there are no rules, there’s no definition. People want great readable literary experiences, and it can be difficult to provide that and stay focused on perfect factual truth.

I’m definitely more humble now than I have been at other times in my life. I think success can humble you as much as failure, because success is as empty as failure.

That life I lived: people end up dying young. There’s no happy ending to a life of addiction.

If my daughter is going to drink when she’s older, I’m just going to say: ‘Look, Daddy had a lot of problems with it. Be very careful: if you ever have any questions, come talk to me.’ But the idea that my children are going to go through life without ever drinking is incredibly naive and ridiculous. But I don’t sit and worry about things that haven’t happened yet.

My intentions were always literary and artistic. I never intended A Million Little Pieces to be a self-help book – if anything, it was intended to be an insult to the self-help industry, but at some point it became part of it.

If I’m the guy who destroyed the memoir genre, I’m not unhappy about that.

· Bright Shiny Morning is published by John Murray at £12.99

[ click to read interview at the Guardian ]

Language is the defining feature of our humanity. It separates us from all other life on the planet. Language allows us to communicate the complex experience of our existence with deftness and subtlety. The written form allows communication to transcend time, so we can reach backwards into history and forward into the future. A writers’ festival not only celebrates our common humanity but defines us as a society in time and place.

The Brisbane Writers Festival is more than a Festival for writers, it’s for everyone who reads. From the world’s headlines, climate change, China or the US Elections, BWF is an event that has meaning and relevance to every single one of us, in every aspect of our lives. This year, there are strong personal voices emanating from the pages of the Festival’s books.

The 2008 festival will bring together approximately 220 writers from around the world including some of the world’s leading authors including the winners of some of the world’s most prestigious literary awards including the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize as well as the winners of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

We welcome many fine writers including, for the first time to Australia,Yann Martel (Life of Pi), the winner of the Reuters Foundation Best Environmental Reporter in the World, Alanna Mitchell, Lloyd Jones(Mister Pip) Kate Grenville with the world exclusive release of her new novel The Lieutenant, Robert Drewe, Simon Winchester, biographerRichard Holmes, Chris Abani, Lawrence Hill, Gwynne Dyer, the controversial James Frey, Mahvish Khan - an interpreter at Guantanamo Bay, and many more to excite, challenge and entertain you.

[ click to visit THE BRISBANE WRITERS FESTIVAL site ]

SYDNEY
Tuesday 16th September
7pm, The New Theatre, 542 King Street, Newtown.
Bookings through Better Read than Dead Bookshop, Ph: + 61 2 9557 8700

MELBOURNE
Wednesday 17th September
6.30pm Readings Bookshop Hawthorn, 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, Ph: + 61 3 9341 7726

BRISBANE (Brisbane Writer’s Festival) tickets available for all BWF sessions:http://www.brisbanewriters festival.com.au/
Or available on the day from the box office.

Thursday 18th September
3.40pm BWF SESSION: A Biography by Any Other Name James Frey, John Hughes, Lloyd Jones
Venue: Queensland Terrace, State Library of Queensland, Cultural Centre, Stanley Place, South Bank, Brisbane

Friday 19th September
10.30am BWF EVENT: QLD University presentation, James Frey
Venue: QLD University Campus, Art Museum, building 11 on University Drive

12.40pm BWF SESSION: From Brisbane to LA Ian Commins, Simon Cleary, James Frey
Venue: Queensland Terrace, State Library of Queensland, Cultural Centre, Stanley Place, South Bank, Brisbane

Saturday 20th September
3.20pm BWF SESSION Bright Shiny Morning: James Frey in conversation with the Literary Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald
Venue: Auditorium 1, State Library of Queensland, Cultural Centre, Stanley Place, South Bank, Brisbane

from Catwalk Queen

Industry Interview: instyle.co.uk’s Maria Milano

This week’s Industry Interview comes from Maria Milano, editor of instyle.co.uk:

As editor of instyle.co.uk, I am involved in all aspects of the website’s production, from writing, styling and editing my team’s work to more strategic tasks including budget crunching and analysing traffic figures to make sure readers are getting more of what they want. Attending A-list parties and fashion shows are certainly a perk of the job, although the quick turn-around time of the web means they’re also very hard work.

Read on to find out what Maria’s trend predictions for A/W are and what she’s been wearing to death…

What was the most exciting/interesting thing that happened this week?
I’ve just returned from holiday so I’m just getting back into the swing of things, but I received a number of fashion show invitations for the upcoming London Fashion Week while I was away, so I’m excited to do some RSVP-ing.

Which trends do you think are going to be big in the next few months?
There is a serious Seventies revival happening, so expect to see lots of flared trousers, fringing and earth tones. Also boho returns, but in a much more grown-up, luxurious folkloric kind of way. Gucci and Topshop have really nailed this trend. Personally, I’m excited to see that lace is making a comeback, which will be perfect for Christmas party season!

What are you wearing to death at the moment?
My Gap peg-leg trousers - I snapped up two pairs the minute they hit the shops.

What was the last book you read?
I just finished James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning. It’s about a group of characters living in LA, and I wanted to read it before my two-week holiday in California. I really recommend it, despite all the James Frey controversy!

Want to watch Shiny Fashion TV? Click here for the latest videos

Came straight to this page? Visit www.catwalkqueen.tv for loads more stories!

[ click to visit the Catwalk Queen ]

from the Guardian UK

James Frey, author of Bright Shiny Morning, talks to Lindesay Irvine

James Frey talks about being exposed for lying in a ‘memoir’, his defiant attitude to critics and his bid to write the Great American Novel

• Lindesay Irvine , 
• guardian.co.uk

• Subscribe via iTunes

• Download mp3

• Podcast feed URL

from Waterstones UK

Bright Shiny Morning is the stunning debut novel by James Frey - author of the controversial but universally adored memoir, A Million Little Pieces, and its follow up, My Friend Leonard.

It generally takes something pretty special to provoke so enthusiastic a response from our Fiction Editor: “Bright Shiny Morning is sure to resonate for many years to come as the first great LA novel… a modern masterpiece of American fiction.” Greg Eden, Waterstone’s Head Office.

Bright Shiny Morning has already been met by similar controversy to its predecessors, and to celebrate its arrival we’re offering a fantastic opportunity to win a signed copy of the first original, unedited manuscript, which is huge and has loads of extra sections that didn’t make the final edit. A runner-up will also win a signed first edition.

No purchase necessary. To be in with a chance of winning this truly unique prize, answer the question below and then enter your details.

Where does most of A Million Little Pieces take place? 

[ click to enter contest at Waterstones UK ]

from the Financial Times

James Frey

By Anna Metcalfe

Published: August 16 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 16 2008 03:00

James Frey is notorious for having embellished parts of his 2003 memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Promoted as a true tale of his time at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic, the book became a New York Times bestseller. Frey published a second memoir, My Friend Leonard, in 2005. Born in 1969 in Cleveland, Ohio, he now lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

What book changed your life?

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. The first time I read it I couldn’t believe someone had written it. It’s offensive and pure and clear.

Who are your literary heroes?

Baudelaire, Céline, Kerouac, Brett Easton Ellis, Henry Miller.

What is the last thing you read that made you laugh out loud?

Something written by Perez Hilton, an American blogger.

At what hour of the day does inspiration strike?

I work from 9am until 5pm. “Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work,” said Chuck Close. I have a blue-collar, working-class approach to what I do.

Where do you write best? My office in my apartment in New York. I close the door but I’m interrupted a lot by my wife, my kid and phone calls. There are three things that writers love: praise, money and interruptions.

How many words do you write a day?

Two to three pages of finished, polished, publishable work.

How many rejections did your first book receive?

17 publishers said no before one said yes.

What book would you give to someone from another era, to paint a picture of the 21st century?

My book Bright Shiny Morning . I think Los Angeles is a city that embodies contemporary US society. It’s segmented and divided, rich and poor. It’s the American dream in its purest form, whether you’re there searching for a roof over your head or for international stardom.

What do you do to celebrate finishing a book?

Nothing. Recently I finished late at night, by myself. I took a deep breath, had a good laugh and went to sleep.

When do you feel most free?

When I hear my daughter say something she’s never said before.

Who would you choose to play you in a film about your life?

I don’t ever want one to be made.

What would you go back and change?

Nothing. I’m okay with everything that’s happened in my life.

What would a novel about your life be called?

It Was a Big F***ing Mess but He Tried Really Hard and He Loved His Family .

Interview by Anna Metcalfe.

James Frey’s latest novel is ‘Bright Shiny Morning’ (HarperCollins)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

[ click to read interview at Financial Times ]

Language is the defining feature of our humanity. It separates us from all other life on the planet. Language allows us to communicate the complex experience of our existence with deftness and subtlety. The written form allows communication to transcend time, so we can reach backwards into history and forward into the future. A writers’ festival not only celebrates our common humanity but defines us as a society in time and place.

The Brisbane Writers Festival is more than a Festival for writers, it’s for everyone who reads. From the world’s headlines, climate change, China or the US Elections, BWF is an event that has meaning and relevance to every single one of us, in every aspect of our lives. This year, there are strong personal voices emanating from the pages of the Festival’s books.

The 2008 festival will bring together approximately 220 writers from around the world including some of the world’s leading authors including the winners of some of the world’s most prestigious literary awards including the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize as well as the winners of the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

We welcome many fine writers including, for the first time to Australia,Yann Martel (Life of Pi), the winner of the Reuters Foundation Best Environmental Reporter in the World, Alanna Mitchell, Lloyd Jones(Mister Pip) Kate Grenville with the world exclusive release of her new novel The Lieutenant, Robert Drewe, Simon Winchester, biographerRichard Holmes, Chris Abani, Lawrence Hill, Gwynne Dyer, the controversial James Frey, Mahvish Khan - an interpreter at Guantanamo Bay, and many more to excite, challenge and entertain you.

[ click to visit THE BRISBANE WRITERS FESTIVAL site ] 

from Accidental Sexiness

Who Owns This Booty? August 9, 2008

It’s Selma Blair! She is on set of her new t.v. show for NBC entitled, Kath and Kim. She is holding a copy of James Frey’s book, “[Bright Shiny Morning].”

[ click to visit the Accidental Sexiness blog ] 

Sunday, August 10th, from 5-7pm

Book release party for Wives, Wheels, Weapons

On Sunday August 10th, from 5-7 pm, join Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in celebrating the latest release of JMc & GHB Editions: James Frey’s Wives, Wheels, Weapons. Published as a companion volume to Frey’s latest novel, Bright, Shiny Morning(Harper Collins, 2008), Wives, Wheels, Weapons is an artists’ book made in collaboration with Terry Richardson and Richard Prince. The book excerpts three vignettes, “Wives”, “Wheels”, and “Weapons,” from Frey’s novel and presents them alongside a photo essay by photographer Terry Richardson. The hardcover edition features dust-jacket images by Richard Prince. Frey, Richardson and Prince will attend and copies of the book will be available for signing.

The book contains historical vignettes of LA, tracing its corruption and its foibles, until - as always happens in the best novels - the city itself becomes a character; a wild and volatile multi-tentacled beast capable of bestowing great hurt (and the odd chunk of real love) on those who are enmeshed in it.–Irvine Welsh, The Guardian.

Wives, Wheels, Weapons is an edition of 2,000, of which 1,000 hardcover and 1,000 softcover copies have been released simultaneously. Hardcover: $75; softcover: $45. 

[ click to read details at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller ]

click to enter contest at InStyle

competition

THE PRIZE:

Win one of ten copies of James Frey’s latest novel, Bright Shiny Morning

Critically acclaimed writer James Frey returns with yet another moving tale, this time the purely fictional Bright Shiny Morning. Set in Los Angeles, it follows the lives of a group of characters in pursuit of their dreams in the relentless metropolis, from the bum on the boardwalk to the Hollywood mega-star with a big secret. Instyle.co.uk is offering you the chance to win a copy of this moving book as it hits bookshelves this week. Simply fill in your details below.

Find out more at www.james-frey.com

[ click to enter contest ] 

from The New York Observer

Pretty Good, For a Book Publisher! Harper Collins Stars Frey, Wall, Oz Earn Rupert Murdoch … Millions!

BY LEON NEYFAKH  |  AUGUST 5, 2008

Getty Images

News Corp.’s fourth quarter earnings report is in, and it looks like HarperCollins made Rupert Murdoch about as much money this year ($160 million) as it did in 2007. His TV, cable, and film divisions, meanwhile, made him about $1.3 billion each!

Sorry, sorry, just some perspective. Back to HarperCollins: earnings for this quarter ($29 million) were down slightly compared to Q3, but up by a full third compared to Q4 last year. According to the summary provided in the report, the biggest titles of the quarter were James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning, Elissa Wall’s Stolen Innocence, and an updated edition of YOU: The Owner’s Manual by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet Oz.

For reference, Bright Shiny Morning has clocked 59,973 copies on BookScan, which means that it has actually sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 86,000. List price for the book was $26.95 per book, which puts gross sales for each copy at about $13.50 and gross sales overall at about $1.2 million.

[ click to read at Observer.com ]

via Brightcove.tv

from Brightcove.tv

from the Single Broke Female blog 

SINGLE BROKE FEMALE

THE INCESSANT RAMBLINGS OF A SINGLE 20 SOMETHING TRYING TO GET HER LIFE AND HER DEBTS IN SOME SORT OF ORDER…WELL, HERE’S HOPING ANYWAY!

SUNDAY, 3 AUGUST 2008

I got paid on Thursday and sent £150 to my credit card…I’m now thinking that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea! I have just run a total of how much cash I have til the end of the month and it’s not very much! 

Thankfully, this weekend was pretty cheap as I didn’t do much; on Friday I took myself off to a book signing in Oxford Street where James Frey was promoting his new book, Bright Shiny Morning. I am currently half way through A Million Little Pieces and can’t put it down so when I saw he had a new book out and was doing a signing, I was intrigued to go along and see what he was like. I have to say he was very charming and wrote in my book ‘You are a beautiful woman, have a beautiful life, a beautiful life’ which I thought was lovely. Saturday I had the trip to the dentist which was the usual £16 for a 5 minute check up and clean- pointless! I wish we had US dentist standards here! Then I just went to my mums as I am still feeling under the weather and just wanted to be looked after, pathetic I know but what can you do!?

[ click to read more of the SINGLE BROKE FEMALE ]

from the Times Online UK 

August 2, 2008

The US antihero: James Frey

Author James Frey talks about ambition, Oprah, and his new life 

Alan Franks

Going along the clean and orderly main street of tiny Amagansett, way out at the end of Long Island, you don’t see the place as an obvious home for one of the most notorious US antiheroes. Never in modern America has a man been more publicly hissed at for writing about his life than 38-year-old James Frey, author of the bestselling A Million Little Pieces. This told the story of the wa