News 8 December 2001

Mainstream have finalised a deal to publish the winners of a literary competition organised by Strathclyde University. The competition is designed to encourage those who have established their credentials as writers, but have not yet achieved full success. For this reason, eligibility is limited to writers under forty years of age, who have published prose and/or poetry in reputable periodicals or journals, but have not yet had a complete volume published commercially. The prize, bequested by the parents of a former University lecturer, Keith Wright, is £3,500 for fiction and £3,500 for poetry. The closing date for entries is 15/1/02 and Mainstream will publish a collection of the best entries in Autumn 2002. For further information contact webenquiries@mainstreampublishing.com

Publishing News interviewed Mainstream Publisher, Bill Campbell, last week in a feature headlined 'For a small house, Mainstream makes a good deal of noise.' In it Campbell announced Mainstream's intention of publishing more fiction:

'Edinburgh has been revolutionized economically, socially and politically in the recent past and there's a good literary scene here with plenty of interesting young new writers which is one of the main reasons we've decided to move into publishing more fiction.'

The first example of this will be a fascinating novel, BODY LANGUAGE by Daniel Gunn in Spring 2002 which has been referred to by best selling author, Ian Rankin, as 'an intriguing, tightly written and ingeniously conceived work of art and artifice, a series of interconnected episodes in the lives of friends and acquaintances, linked by Edinburgh and their shared passions, jealousies and foibles. It's a book that challenges the reader, its prose as sharp as a surgeon's scalpel. A bravura performance.'

The Publishing News article also referred to Mainstreams commitment to publish 'books on controversial political issues.' The biography of MARTIN McGUINNESS continues to make the news. Reviews appeared in the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times this weekend and there was a piece in the Independent last Monday. The book has also been discussed on BBC TV's Question Time on which McGuinness was a guest.

David McKittrick, is one of the authors of LOST LIVES, the mammoth tome which listed all those killed in the troubles in Ireland. It gave a brief account of the life and death of each, a task which took eight years and resulted in more than 1,600 pages. In the INDEPENDENT recently he suggested that something similar might be of value to the people who lost loved ones in the September 11th attacks. A few months after the publication of LOST LIVES, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were among those who read extracts in a Christmas broadcast, prompting Blair to say 'Reading LOST LIVES the same feelings come back again and again - pity, anger, despair, but perhaps most of all the powerful connection that there has to be a better future than this.'

And Finally...

In the PROMOTIONS section of the web site Mainstream run weekly competitions. If you have not yet had a look at it yet please feel free to browse. The winner receives a box of books and there are no entry restrictions.