Meet the Authors: January

How easy is it to get a novel published these days? If you’re a first-time writer, the answer is—it’s no easier than it ever was, with the added obstacle of having to find a literary agent first, especially in the UK and US markets. One author who decided to submit a novel on her own was Marina Lewycka, author of a recent Select Editions pick, We Are All Made of Glue. She says, ‘I wrote my first novel in longhand while at university and no one has ever seen it. The second one I sent out to everyone I could think of and I had thirty-six rejection slips—and that doesn’t take into account those who never replied. You have to have a slight grain of madness in you to persist after that.’ But she did, and moreover signed up for a writing course. ‘The most wonderful thing for me was that the external examiner at the end of the course was a literary agent and that’s how the book was picked up. I guess that tells you that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know that counts.’

Author of the Month

Barack Obama

A year ago this month, on 20 January 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. At the same time, Reader’s Digest published an exclusive condensation of his first book, Dreams from My Father. How has this statesman and best-selling author fared over the last year?

In his first few days in office, Obama issued executive orders and memoranda instructing the US military to make plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, and demanded that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp be closed ‘as soon as practicable’ and no later than January 2010.

He was scarcely in office before US internal economic problems took precedence. In February and March his government instituted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and Public-Private Investment Program. By the third quarter of 2009, the US economy was expanding at a 2.8% annual rate: Obama believes that his stimulus package helped stop the economic downturn, and economists tend to agree. However, unemployment has continued to rise.

In February and March, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made overseas trips to announce a ‘new era’ in US foreign relations with Russia and Europe. Obama also reached out to Arab leaders in his first television interview over an Arabic cable network, Al Arabiya. Meanwhile, the US deployed more troops to Afghanistan. While working to bring about a ‘New Deal’ in health and welfare at home, Obama called on Americans to ‘lead the world, by deed and by example’. As an authentic gesture on nuclear issues he made budget cuts to support reduction of nuclear weaponry in the US.

On October 9, 2009 the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Obama had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ‘for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’. The Nobel Prize Committee highlighted his efforts to promote nuclear nonproliferation (particularly in Iran), and the fostering of a ‘new climate’ in international relations, especially in reaching out to the Muslim world. Obama accepted this award in Oslo, Norway in December, with ‘deep gratitude and deep humility’.

Since then, the world has been focussed on the international conference on climate change in Denmark. The Copenhagen Accord mainly took its imprimatur from Barack Obama’s meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa. But several nations, notably the Europeans, were disappointed that the accord failed to demand deeper emissions cuts by the industrialised world.

To read about Barack Obama’s first winter as a community worker in Chicago, click here

The photograph shows Barack Obama helping to paint new housing in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: at the time he criticised the Bush administration’s failure to respond adequately to the disaster.

Click here to order your copy of Dreams from My Father