Sarah Dunant, Rose Tremain, Jilly Cooper, India Knight, Joanna Trollope, Arabella Weir, Maggie O'Farrell, Michel Hanson, Mavis Cheek, Tracy Chevalier, Deborah Moggach, John O'Farrell... All introduced by Sandi Toksvig.

Friday 4th of May, Mermaid Theatre, Blackfriars, 9.30am-4pm, £85 including tea, coffee, lunch and book signings - Waterstones will be there.

Good Housekeeping has recently really beefed up its involvement with books and good reading - including going back to having a story in every issue. If this is anything like the very similar She Book Day that I went to years ago the audience will be stuffed with other writers - published and aspiring - with lots of opportunities to meet each other. It was actually the moment when I realised that there was a whole industry revolving round what I and all those other writers could do.

No sign of online booking - you send a cheque payable to Good Housekeeping with name, address, telephone and how many tickets you'd like to Laura Lovis, GH/Book Day, 72 Broadwick Street, London W1F, 9EP

It's a lot of money, but you'd have to go to a lot of festivals and readings to accumulate that line-up any other way. I'm thinking of going - anyone else?

Emma

<Added>

Apologies to Michele Hanson, my typo having inflicted a sex-change on her.

This sounds brilliant, Emma. Will get my copy of GH when next I'm out. presumably it's the April issue?

Gahhh!!!

Yes, I would love it... but it’s London again, isn’t it. GH is a national magazine. How I wish these things could be more central. How I wish it would be acknowledged that not all writers are London-based. While you're there, Emma, I don’t suppose you’d suggest they venture north… even Birmingham is do-able in a day for most people…

Jem, yes, it's the April issue, which dropped through my door this morning.

Dee, even as a Londoner I know what you mean. The book trade is horribly London-centred, and so is the magazine trade - they think it is central! I notice GH and their ilk are more likely to try other parts of the country when it's retail fashion or cooking, so it may be the authors who balk, and having it elsewhere reduces who they can get.

Emma

I know, Emma, I know. It just makes me feel like a parochial oik!

No, I think it's Londoners who are parochial - it's us (we?) who don't know there's a world out there...

Emma

<Added>

Though as a Saaarf Londoner I suffer from North Londoners who don't know there's life beyond the Tube or the other side of the River...

Emma

There's always the Oxford literary festival, with lots of famous writers, Philip Pullman, Philip Reeve, Anthony Horowitz, Jackie Wilson, Matthew Skelton, Geraldine McCaughrean...and more...and that's just the children's authors.

And my pal Tim Pears is there too, launching his new novel, 'Blenheim Orchard', which I'm dying to read.

http://www.sundaytimes-oxfordliteraryfestival.co.uk/events_subject.htm

The thing I find frustrating about literary festivals is that the brochures and websites are so tempting, and when I get down to it the only two things I want to go to are always either at exactly the same time, or at opposite ends of the week. I've never been able to work it so it was worth going. Which is why I've never been to one. (This was a drawback when I was invited to two as an author - I hadn't the faintest idea how they work or what happens)

Whereas the GH day is one single strand, so you sit tight and get to hear ALL of these speakers.

Emm

Emma, sorry if it's a silly question but what do you feel the benefits are of attending such an event? Obviously you get to hear these writers speak, but what do they speak about, typically? Do they just do general engaging chat or do they usually talk much about how they actually write?

I know you don't know about this particular one, but am asking since you sound as if you've attended a few similar ones.

I've heard a few authors speak and, unlike meeting them at say an Arvon course (which I've found really inspiring), I find they often pander to the crowd who just wants a jolly, and sometimes don't say much about their writing or writing processes at all. I imagine they just go because it gets them some publicity and hopefully more people will buy their books?

Or am I being a misery?

Deb

Well, my very limited experience is that some do, some don't talk well about their writing, but that you always learn something, if only about other people's process, to try when your own fails you. It does depend on how well it's chaired, whether a good discussion gets going, so you can only hope, about that. Rose Tremain is always interesting, and Tracy Chevalier should be good - she's very bright. Sarah Dunant, too - I've met her and she's very articulate about it all. In fact there are a lot of hist fickers on the list, and as I'm gently gathering ideas for my PhD, if it seems relevant and I'm feeling brave I'll hope to ask one or two if I can get in touch on some other occasion...

I'd have money on a good fifth of the audience being some kind of writer or other, so it's not quite your ordinary audience. And there's lots of chatting time in breaks, because unlike a festival, people aren't dashing off somewhere else.

Emma

Thanks for that, Emma.

I guess I was feeling somewhat jaded after I went to a so-called Literary Lunch last summer to see a speaker who is a well-known romantic novelist. Not my bag but I thought as you said, that you always learn something, so I went out of my way to go along. However, the crowd were not writers and she pleased them by telling anecdotes about getting old, which most of them loved. I didn't.

She kept saying, "now back to the writing", but every single time she went off on a tangent straightaway and never actually talked about her writing. I was pretty disappointed, because obviously it cost me money and time.

I know life is like that, though. You win some, etc.

You make good points that the line-up of the GH day is sufficiently long and illustrious that it's bound to have at least some good speakers!

Thanks,

Deb

Yes, when it shades from Writer on Writing, into Writer as Personality, it does get tiresome. From the sound of the GH day, as planned, it'll be panels, and 4 or 5 of those talking to/off each other ought to stick to writing, I'd have thought.

Must send off my cheque. Crossed fingers it's worth it.

(Incidentally, no idea if it'll happen this time, but I still have on my shelves complete boxed sets of the Penguin Sixties and the Penguin Modern Sixties, which they were selling at the She book day for £50 the lot - would have been £150 normally!)

I think this is likely to be an important occasion and well-worth attending if possible. I read about this in the book trade 'news'. In view of the fact that GH is behind this may well encourage other publishers to consider 'shorts' for publication. This event may be regarded as a useful PR opportunity for writers but this will depend upon that writer's ability - not in the field of writing - but in 'impressing' people without overdoing it.

Len

I think Len's got a good point. If we all wish there was more fiction in the glossies, then we'd better turn up and look as if we'd buy it if there were.

Which makes me realise I haven't actually booked my ticket yet... Where's my cheque book?

Emma