Ailsa Mcfarlane News Today

Whats in a Page: Ailsa McFarlane on the charged moments of her debut Highway Blue Seija Rankin © Provided by Entertainment Weekly Joel Fullwood; Hogarth The road trip novel is a literary trope as old as time, but youve never read a road trip novel like Ailsa McFarlanes Highway Blue. The conceit is also one the author knows personally: She left school to drive around both the United States and Europe. Her roadside inspiration became her debut novel, which follows a formerly-m...

From Sally Rooney to Raven Leilani, female novelists have captured the literary zeitgeist. But is this cultural shift something to celebrate or rectify?

Alerts Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about. Advertisement Image: Catapult We’re big fans of essays that combine cultural criticism with memoir, and Larissa Pham’s Pop Song especially sings when the writer turns her eye to art and pop culture. In her debut book of nonfiction—memoir by way of inte...

Introducing our 10 best debut novelists of 2021 The Observer It’s a tough time to be a debut novelist, with so many of the usual channels for promoting new writing suspended or curtailed. The Observer’s pick of this year’s first novels will be published in a country whose bookshops are closed, and whose literary festivals have been postponed or made virtual. It therefore feels particularly important to celebrate these books, to make sure that they receive the profile and ...