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Andrew Solomon has won the 2014 Wellcome Book Prize and £30,000 in prize money for his nonfiction work, Far from the Tree. The award organizers strive to honor both fiction and nonfiction books that focus on medicine and health.

Solomon worked on writing this book for ten years. In the past, he discussed his research in a popular TED talk called “Love, No Matter What.”

Sir Andrew Motion, chair of the judging panel, revealed in a statement that the judges unanimously selected Solomon’s book as the winner from a pool of six titles. The five other books that made it onto the short list includes The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, Wounded by Emily Mayhew, Creation by Adam Rutherford, Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks, and Inconvenient People by Sarah Wise. (Photo Credit: Annie Leibovitz)

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How do you follow-up great success or great failure?

For Elizabeth Gilbert, she needs to “go home” which means going back to writing. In a presentation delivered at the TED 2014 conference, Gilbert shares the thoughts and fears that came to her after experiencing phenomenal success with Eat, Pray, Love.

We’ve embedded the full talk in the video above. Back in 2009, Gilbert gave a TED talk called “Your Elusive Creative Genius.” It has drawn more than 8 million views. The TED team included it in a video playlist called “The Creative Spark.”

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Today Penguin USA released its year-end report, counting a $156 million operating profit for the year.

The publisher also gave readers a peek at Thomas Pynchon‘s upcoming novel, Bleeding Edge. Publication is set for September 17th. Here’s more from Penguin Press: “it is 2001 in Silicon Alley, New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11.”

In addition, Elizabeth Gilbert will also publish a novel in October, “infusing her inimitable voice into a story of love, adventure, and discovery.” In May, Charlaine Harris will end her Sookie Stackhouse series with Dead Ever After. (Via Sarah Weinman)

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Hachette Book Group, Penguin and Simon & Schuster have launched Bookish, nearly two years after the site was first announced in May 2011.

The site will recommend books and let readers shop for books. It also shares book excerpts and features essays from its editors and authors (we’ve included some excerpts below).

According to Digital Book World sources, the publishers have invested “about $16 million” in the new venture. Bookish also counted the participation of 16 other major publishers, including Random House, Inc., Scholastic, HarperCollins Publishers and Perseus Books Group.

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Readers of this blog know just how much I adored Buzz Bissinger's forthcoming memoir Father's Day.  I wrote about it here not once, but twice.  I read passages out loud to my students.  I told a seatmate on a train.  I just kinda—well, did my thing.

There goes Miss Crazy Effusive again.

Philadelphia-area readers and thinkers and hearts (that's all of us, right?) now have a chance not just to meet Buzz and hear him talk about the making of the memoir, the glories and heartbreak of fatherhood, and the art of the rave (don't you want to hear Buzz talk about the art of the rave?), but to support a really important cause—the Spells Writing Lab, a literacy-focused organization that offers after-school tutoring, weekend writing workshops, in-school assistance with student publications, and professional development opportunities for teachers.  If that's not enough to persuade you, consider the composition of its advisory board, which is rocked by Stephen Fried, Elizabeth Gilbert, Carol Saline, Lisa Scottoline, Lori Tharps, and Caroline Tiger, among others.

The event is taking place at the Loews Hotel on 1200 Market Street, Philadelphia, on May 10, 2012. It begins at 6:15, and Anyone Who is Anyone will be there.  (I hope to make it, too.)  More information can be found right here.

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Click here to learn more about the Golden Coffee Cup.

Yes, we are busy in so many ways. I tend to have a lot of family obligations at this time and it slows the flow of my work. I’ve learned this secret: It’s really all about chipping away a little at a time. You can do this!

Today’s we have two high fives from sisters: Catherine Gilbert Murdoch, author of a number of great books: Princess Ben and Dairy Queen, and her sister Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love.

Yep, a creative family can help you on your journey. These sisters have tossed down some wonderful literary stuff. How cool is that?

I hope that you have someone in your family that is just as on fire for creative pursuits as you. (I know not everyone has a natural creative family, your family is the people you love, group with, and grow with, not necessarily born to.) It’s nice to journey with folks like that. I hope you take some time today be thankful for your creative family. I know I am.

Come back tomorrow for more of the Golden Coffee Cup!

Today's quote is a blessing. I'm big on blessings. Words have power. Never doubt it. I thought I'd say a little traditional Irish blessing over us all for this day in the road.

May you always be blessed
with walls for the wind,
a roof for the rain,
a warm cup of tea by the fire,
laughter to cheer you,
those you love near you,
and all that your heart might desire.

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Ever wanted to own a piece of vampire novelist Anne Rice? Powell’s Books will be selling 7,000 titles from Anne Rice’s private library.

Depending on the success of this venture, Powell’s may expand to in-store offerings as well. Right now, the site has posted more than 1000 titles, including Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, and Homer‘s Odyssey.

Here’s more from the site: “Included in the collection are editions signed or annotated by Ms. Rice, and many have her library markings on the spines. The collection showcases her love of literature and writing and reveals a true intellectual curiosity — classic philosophy, the Brontes, biblical archaeology, and Louisiana history are just a few of the subject areas represented.”

Editor’s Note: This post was changed to correctly state that 1000, not 9 titles are currently available for sale on the site.

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I saw Eat, Pray, Love this past weekend, and it made me hungry—for Italian food, for marvelous life, and for Javier Bardem. I read the book when it first came out, so I knew it was a memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, about Elizabeth Gilbert. I very much related to the book, so I was interested (and a little defensive, maybe) to see how casting would work out.

Julie Roberts, I was okay with, although I hadn’t see her in anything I’d particularly enjoyed in years. Billy Crudup as her ex-husband? Perfect. Richard Jenkins as Richard? Excellent. Javier Bardem as Felipe? Urg … um … that guy with the creepy hair from No Country for Old Men? Urg … what?

Apologies. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Eat, Pray, Love is the memoir of “Liz” Gilbert. Liz has everything a modern woman is supposed to dream of having—a husband, a house, a successful career—yet she finds herself lost, confused, and searching for what she really wants in life. Following her heart-breaking and messy divorce, Liz has an affair with a younger man, David. She begins to dress like David, think like David, eat like David … she comes to realize that whenever she is in a relationship, she soaks up the personality of her mate. For years, she has been a woman with no identity, and upon this realization, Liz goes numb. She feels nothing, and in order to feel again, she decides to break free of her comfort zone and leave the U.S. for a year. In that year, she will visit Italy, India, and Bali. Hence, “eat, pray, love.”

Julia Roberts looks amazing in this movie. Whatever she’s eating and putting on her skin at night, I want it. Liz’s interior dialogue is priceless. She thinks about a lot of things I think about, which is again, why I so thoroughly related to Eat, Pray, Love, in book form. Bill Crudup, cast as her emotional ex-husband, did nothing but look teary in an elevator at one point, and it made me sob. Richard Jenkins, telling his own story of loss and despair, similarly had me biting the inside of my lip to stop from crumbling to the floor in tears. And as I mentioned, Javier Bardem, as her love interest in Bali, was sexy and utterly charming. (Where the heck did that come from? He is perfect as a creepy dude; now, I believe he’s perfect as a romantic lead, as well.)

The beautiful locations made me want to pack my bags and leave town. In the film, Liz wants to “marvel at something.” There is plenty of marveling, for Liz and the audience. Each location has its own charm, and the director does a good job of changing the tempo to further illuminate the heightened cultural differences between, say, Italy and India. The music was all over the map—highlighted by Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” and “Harvest Moon” (which again, made me get all emotional)—plus a score like a 1960s romance flick.

What I’m trying to say: Eat, Pray, Love is an emotional flick. There are at least a dozen gems hidden from scene to scene—lessons to live by, similar to what I learned while reading the book. Generally, this is a movie about SLOWING DOWN. It starts in Italy,

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Hello my dearest blog readers! How the dickens are you? Isn't 'blog readers' is a dull term? Personally, I quite like 'bloggles', or 'bloggins,' or perhaps (if you were all kindly prepared to don leg-warmers), 'bloggets'...?

Anyway, I hope you're all well and dandy. Things have been barmy, naturally; but a little more so than usual. To give you some indication, I'd say, crazier than a soup sandwich, but not quite as mad as a bag of cats.

I've been working on several illustration jobs at once and have been attempting to fairly price up another couple. I've met up with the Surrey Illustrators (a very fine bunch of people) and I've been down to London to blether at the feet of Harry Potters' people in Bloomsbury.

Incidentally, I know I've spoken about the different 'feels' of each publishing house, but have I mentioned the eccentricity of publishing buildings?

If you lined all the publishing offices up next to eachother you'd have the kind of skyline of which Tim Burton could only dream. What's really great is they're all so unexpected. I always find myself picturing an interview beforehand to try and steady my nerves, but I NEVER get the situation right. I'm half thinking, I might have to envisage a bouncy castle or an icecream van in my mental walk-through next time... just to cover my bases. Publishing houses are all fantastic. They range from shiny, high rises with gated security stations and receptionists, stern and highly armed (with biro's and name badges, naturally), to eccentric tumbledown houses, to Templar's magically warren-y offices (which I'm sure they're short-leasing from a large family of badgers). At the end of Publishing Road, I'm sure there'd be an old, and very esteemed art director that lived in a shoe.

One publisher has wall to wall windowed lifts, so if you're romantic you feel like you're flying, and if you're like me, you feel like you've farted with enough gusto to launch. I'd also note that when visiting said publisher, due to a strategically placed Starbucks below, when travelling higher than second floor, short skirts are to be avoided at all costs. And picking ones' nose is an out and out no-no.

The Bloomsbury offices have THE smallest lift you've ever seen. I'm not joking, it's about a metre and half wide, by a metre deep.... and there's three of us in there.... and we're all the same height. Now, the height thing can be seen one of two ways. With tall people, I tend to be at armpit (or worse still) crotch height. For anyone that's never had the pleasure; introducing yourself when you're eye-to-crotch is something from which it's kind of hard to recover. With people the same size as me, and particularly in a interview type environment, the eye-to-eye thing is always slightly unnerving; you over-analyse your movements until you develop an erratic twitch. On top of that, it's before the interview, so I'm attempting to make small talk AND impress at the same time. On top of THAT, our faces (all three of them) are mere inches apart... I feel like I'm in the Bohemian Rhapsody video. Quick, I think... and twitch, and twitch and think; drop some enlightened phrase on publishing current affairs. Talk apps, talk distribution channels, talk anything but... 'I LIKE HARRY POTTER!' Dear God, when you belt out this inanity, you can only hope you didn't top it off by spitting in anyone's eye or stomping on anyone's foot. And unfortunately, we've still got another three floors to ride...all staring (in extreme close-up) and in palpable silence at my reddening, twitching face.

Thank goodness publishers are a nice breed of human. Whether I'm trying to exit out of the 'entrance' door at Orion, bashing head-long, like a trapped wilderbeast, into the glass doors at Hodder, or babbling incoherantly in Bloomsbury's lift, all of them have been decent enough not to mention it. All I can say is, if they can be this nonchalant at my behaviour though, it does make me think; what on EARTH do the rest of you illustrators get up to????

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I've now read at least a half dozen reviews of Elizabeth Gilbert's new mega-memoir, Committed, including the Curtis Sittenfeld version that appears on this weekend's cover of the New York Times Book Review. I've watched her talk. I've read the interviews. And it occurs to me that, were I to read this book, I probably wouldn't know much more about Gilbert's travails or voice or happy ending than I already do. There's a remarkable sameness in the press, in the reviews. There is little variation in how Gilbert's story is summarized (she never wanted to get remarried, but she was forced to), in which telling anecdotes are brought forward (her grandmother's marriage story, the marriage stories of Hmong grandmothers), in how Gilbert herself is portrayed (chatty, entertaining, self-knowing bordering on self-absorbed). Were Gilbert running for office no one would be left confused about the party line. There is no murk in the margins. No room, it seems, for the unexpected retelling or interpretation.

A dozen years ago, when I was just starting out in this book life, I was encouraged to think about the "one line or two" that summarized my books. The hook that would broadcast their intentions, content, style. I failed for the first book. I failed for the next. I pretty much gave up by the time I'd written a book called Flow, the autobiography of a river. Say what? most editors said, after listening to me talk in a circle about it. Is it history? Is it poetry? Is it fiction? Even my novels have refused to fit inside the lines of what might be easily parlayed; I end up writing most summaries or jacket flap copy with a sense of familiar defeatism. I need more sentences than there's room to print. Again and again, I come up hookless.

I should probably work on that, but frankly, I don't know how to. That's not a boast; it's a confession. It's the reason why I need to write most of my books all the way through before I can try to sell them, for I never fully know, until I'm done too many drafts to count, what my books are all about. Even then, I need some room to explain them. Even then, they will be summarized, reviewed, and interpreted in ways that I often don't see coming.

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It occurred to me as a publishing professional reading this painful review of Elizabeth Gilbert's new book that there is a case to be made for unpublished authors having certain advantages over bestselling authors. No track record can be a very good thing when it comes to selling books. Granted, it's very hard to get noticed in the slush pile given the volume of submissions agents receive, and if you are lucky enough to find a good agent who will fight for your book, the hurdles to get it sold are often high and daunting. But let's say you get there and the book becomes a huge runaway hit. Then what? How does one follow up a success like Eat, Pray, Love, arguably one of the most successful books of the last decade? It sounds like from the descriptions I've been reading about Gilbert's experience, not easily. She wrote and trashed an entire draft of this book (I wince every time I think about the author, the editor, the publisher, the agent, and what they must have gone through during this grueling process), and based on Maslin's review, it sounds like she might have been better off doing the same for the final! For all the money and fame, there are real challenges that come with having a hit like Gilbert did, and while the book has certainly made her a millionaire and this follow-up is likely to have strong early sales based on name alone, it sounds like it might wind up being a disappointment because the expectations are just so high. Once you hit that mighty bestseller list, the conversations get more complicated, and the pressure to perform and beat the last one can be challenging at best and impossible to achieve at worst. Sometimes the dream is better than the reality, but isn't that often the case in life? If you are able to enjoy and savor the process of writing, stay focused on the positives, work hard and passionately despite any obstacles you might face, there's a lot to be grateful for doing what you love, especially at the start of a new year.

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The New York Times has a piece on Elizabeth Gilbert’s much-awaited follow-up to EAT, PRAY, LOVE. Her upcoming book is titled COMMITTED: A SKEPTIC MAKES PEACE WITH MARRIAGE and is due to be released in January by Viking.

According to the Times, “the book is a memoir of a tumultuous year that came 18 months after “Eat, Pray, Love” leaves off, as well as a meditation on wedlock.”

We will certainly keep you updated on this eagerly anticipated release.

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I had the great O-MI-GOD kind of privilege yesterday to hear the New York Times Best Selling author, Elizabeth Gilbert speak at UCSB as part of their phenomenal Arts & Lectures series.

In case you were recently hijacked and forced to live in absolute seclusion for the last year (not like that's a bad thing), you might have missed hearing about the incredible success of Liz Gilbert's memoir entitled Eat, Pray, Love that has been on the Bestseller List for 60 weeks. Wow. Yeah, that's what I think, too.

She lectured for about a half an hour about writing process, which I loved, and then turned it over to the audience for questions. This always makes me a little anxious because people can ask the corniest, most embarrassing things. And for some reason, I feel completely responsible for every inane thing that might come out of a fellow audience member's mouth. Like I'm the room monitor and Liz might hold it against me if someone says something truly stupid.

But the audience behaved itself quite nicely-- save for the guy that asked for her phone number. My favorite question to her was about intention vs. impact. A man asked her what the "size" of her intention was when she started her book. Did it match the impact? I knew that she had sold the book proposal for her memoir before she made the trip to the "I" countries-- Italy, India, Indonesia. She'd spent her advance money traveling and supporting herself for the year.

Her answer surprised a lot of us. She said she wrote that book for one reader-- her friend, Darcy, who was going through a hard time. Liz thought Darcy would benefit from hearing what she had learned about living. She said, the book could actually start out "Dear Darcy" and end "Love, Liz". She credited her younger sister, Catherine Murdock Gilbert, a young adult author, who had given her this sage writing advice. Write to one reader.

Know exactly who you are writing to, and stay with them. If you are focused on just one person, it will help you to know what to leave in and what to keep out. For example, Liz started to ask herself at some point in the book if she needed to explain yoga, then remembered that Darcy wouldn't need that. She moved right on.

In addition to "one reader" being strong writing guidance, it is powerful marketing advice as well. Liz Gilbert could have put the intention and pressure on herself to write a bestseller. But, she didn't. She wrote the best book she could to help a friend, and in doing so, wrote from an authentic place inside of herself. That naked, honest voice attracted ONE MILLION readers.

I was inspired by Robin's post last week about the Butterfly Effect and I think this dovetails with that. Yes, for god's sake, we all want to be phenomenally successful, great writers and strong promoters of our work. But there is enormous power in doing one thing-- one butterfly flapping their wing. One author speaking to one reader.

I also loved that in the middle of her lecture, Liz Gilbert took a moment to promote her sister's work. There will probably be a significant spike in the sales of Dairy Queen while she is on tour.
But her celebrity aside, that was one writer talking up one book. That's how it gets done.

The power on ONE. Take heart, friends--

Best,
Mary Hershey

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Last night's Mantova Literary festival event was really fun. Two more to go today -- the one at 10:30 tonight for the volunteers and all sounds like it will be very wild and fun. ("Do you mind if people dressed as your characters are up on the stage with you?")

Neil, Last month you wrote that you would be signing in Sweden soon. I can't seem to find any information on this neither on the Internet or on your site. Will you be posting time and place in advance so that I may buy cheap train tickets (or fix my car)? Regards,anders.

Information came in yesterday... so: on the evening of Thursday the 13th of September I'll be presenting Stardust and doing a Q&A at the Fantastic Film Festival in Lund.
On Friday the 14th at 2:30pm – 3:30pm I'll be doing a signing at the Lund Town Hall. And then at 4:30 I will be at an event in the crypt of the Lund Cathedral...

The following week I'll be in Japan, and I should have information on that very soon.

Right. Leaving the press office now.

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