Ali Shaw explores the sleepy hollow ways and tiptoe paths of the countryside as they wend their way through literature, from The Wind in the Willows to Tolkein’s Shire. ...
Ali Shaw gets lost in Poland’s Puszcza Białowieska, the largest surviving remnant of the primeval forest. What is it about stories of the deep woods that fascinates, scares and changes ...
In the third instalment of his column, The Written World, author Ali Shaw explores the desert as the cradle of literature, religions and wars, and also as a mirror held ...
“To come here you must risk not only the bear’s meathook claws but the jaws of the orca, the nose of the wolf, perhaps even the magic of some stranger ...
We are very excited to announce the beginning of a new monthly column by novelist Ali Shaw exploring landscapes — as they are, and as we perceive them. His first piece ...
If I’m honest, the characters I most readily relate to are the ones who worry too much, or are ill-equipped to deal with the subtleties of human interaction. The first ...
I guess the thing that appeals to me most in fiction is an emphasis on expressionism: the literary equivalent of (bear with me) the German Expressionist painters from the start ...
Litro steps into the billiard room and brandishes the lead piping for its crime special this month, and it’s appropriate because in the last couple of weeks there have been ...
Just a quick heads up this week towards something that’s worth picking up a copy of: the Radio Times. Yes, the Radio Times, because its Christmas Bumper edition contains a ...
I promised in a blog last week to write about Mick Jackson’s collection Bears of England (from which he read at the Small Wonder short story festival) and I’ve been looking forward to ...
I didn’t post on Friday because I was at the Small Wonder Festival at Charleston House, near Brighton. It’s a literary festival, now in its sixth year, that spans four days ...
Given that this is a blog about books, it would be hard to let this week pass without mentioning Dan Brown. Purely in terms of commercial success, the release of his ...
I’m writing this a day early, since I’m going to be away for a while from tomorrow and the demands of suitcases waiting to be filled mean this piece will ...
Since Litro is focusing on the topic of film adaptations this month, I thought I’d write today about a recent instance of a film adapted from a piece of short fiction: ...
The big news in the book industry this week has been Bloomsbury’s cover design for Liar by Justine Larbalestier. You can read all about it here, but if ...
