World of Books Group, the UK’s largest retailer of used books, have partnered with the Society of Authors to launch a new grant to support writers as they work on books of any genre that have the power to inspire progressive behaviour change.
Actor, writer and director awarded £3,000 for best original script by a writer new to radio, at the 2021 BBC Audio Drama Awards. Christopher Douglas takes the Tinniswood Award for best original audio drama script for ‘Tristram Shandy: In Development.’
Five comics creators have joined the Steering Committee for the SoA’s Comics Creators Network alongside founders Hannah Berry and Woodrow Phoenix.
We welcome the Chancellor’s £400 million boost for the arts, but the Budget fails to do ‘whatever it takes’ to help self-employed authors and creative professionals who have fallen through the gaps in Government support over the last 12 months.
UK writers’ unions the Society of Authors and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), backed by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), have joined forces to research the allegedly exploitative practices of some publishers that charge authors to publish their work. This follows a sharp rise in complaints from authors about these companies received by both unions.
The first 2021 round of our Authors in the Health Crisis survey is now open.
We have written to the Competition & Markets Authority and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy expressing concerns about the proposed $2.2 billion acquisition of US publisher Simon & Schuster by German conglomerate, Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House.
Individuals supported by the Fund in 2020 can now reapply, as we take stock of how the SoA can continue to support authors through the health crisis in 2021.
Author takes the 2020 John Florio Prize for her ‘exceptional’ and ‘agile’ translation from Italian of Trick by Domenico Starnone, in the Society of Authors’ annual Translation Prizes. Editor Saba Ahmed wins the TA First Translation Prize for the second year running.
The SoA has joined with the Association of Illustrators to submit written evidence to the House of Lords’ EU Sub-Committee inquiry into the future of UK-EU trade in services. In it, they call on Government to act urgently to end the uncertainty faced by creative practitioners as a result of Brexit and, ‘to ensure that the UK can be the best place in the world to be a creator.’
The eight shortlisted writers include ‘Holby City’ writer Becky Prestwich, award-winning actor, writer and director Fraser Ayres, MA screenwriting graduate Isaac Fisher & more – part of the BBC Audio Drama Awards.
The Society of Authors backs call from the European Writers Council (of which we are members) and the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations to the Ministers of Culture from European countries to take urgent steps required to end the violence and repression against writers, translators, and the independent cultural scene in Belarus
