Status Updates From A Bookshop of One’s Own

Alice Walker was beautiful and serene…

…And in that queue was a young Black British writer, Malorie Blackman, who was struggling to get published. It took Blackman about three hours to get to the front of the queue, to the signing table, to meet her hero. In her outstanding auto biography Just Savin' she tells us how their conversation went:

'Please could you write "don't give up" in it for me requested.

All my life, books have been as essential to me as breathing… …Don't you sometimes just stop and marvel at a sentence? How did the writer pick those words, polish them and then put them in the right order? How did they create a sentence so breathtaking, you just want to pick it up and hug it? So, dear writers, for what you say and how vou say it. I am immensely grateful