London Book Fair 2012 | Part Two: China & delayed gratification

The sun rises in the East

Each year the London Book Fair has a focus and this year it was China. Thought-provoking talks were dedicated to exploring the developing tastes and buying patterns of this huge market, alongside the movement of Chinese literature into other languages and cultures, and vice versa.

Rising literary star Sheng Keyi, who's Northern Girls is soon to be published by Penguin Asia, spoke of the clash between old and new China and reflected on how "in most of [my work] I am trying to reflect the life and fate of the small villages".

We also particularly enjoyed Tuesday's author of the day Bi Feiyu - a prolific author and screenwriter with over 50 short stories, 10 medium-length novels and 4 full-length novels to his name.  Bi was in conversation with Rosie Goldsmith on the Pen stand. We learned that he achieved much of that extraordinary output by writing through the night, when he was working as a teacher!

Behind Bars & learning from failure

Another great lecture on the Pen stand, though not about China, was given by Anthony Horowitz who talked about his work with Prison Literacy and Reading schemes.

This is a cause I've got a bee in my bonnet about anyway... statistics vary, but it is estimated that 2/3 of UK prisoners are functionally illiterate.

BUT the good news is that Horowitz also spoke about his journey to publication - it took 30 years and a variety of media before the first Alex Rider book got a big reception. He said that he had benefited from this "failure" - he learned new skills, got to try out different ideas, and hone his craft. Worth bearing in mind when freaking out you haven't written a best-seller over the weekend ;)