We’re well in to autumn here at Slightly Foxed and the season is passing by in a whirl of literary conviviality. We’ve been down to Whitehall to toast next year’s Gladstone’s Library writers in residence, up the road in Shoreditch to The Bookclub for a turn at an evening event dedicated to magazines (where we think the hipsters enjoyed hearing about SF but it was quite hard to tell behind all the beards and craft beer bottles) and back and forth to our bookshop on Gloucester Road for a flurry of author talks and launches.
One especially jolly occasion was a party to celebrate this year’s Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize shortlist (winner to be announced on 4 November). Our little shop was fit to bursting with the literati, with Biography Club members, authors, agents, publishers and friends there to toast the prize and listen to the shortlisted authors read from their books. We’ll be sharing some photos from the evening and a recording of the readings on our website next week, so do look out for those.
Following all this excitement, we’re now looking forward to a few quiet weeks to prepare ourselves for what we hope will be a busy and fruitful winter season. Gail and Hazel are soon to send final proofs of the winter issue up to Smith Settle, which is just as well as the binders’ parcels of the autumn issue are fast disappearing. Those of you who subscribe will have already read it but for any readers of our newsletter who’ve been thinking about trying Slightly Foxed we can highly recommend the current issue. Of course we think each issue is a good one but this one seems especially full of excellent writing and interesting recommendations. Many readers have written in to say how much they enjoyed Maggie Fergusson’s piece on Patrick McGrath, and have been inspired to read his novel Asylum as a result, so for this month’s extract we thought we’d share it here. We hope you’ll enjoy reading – or re-reading – it.
Further down the page you’ll find links and information about our bookplates and a few Christmas present ideas, as well as our usual selection of recent readers’ comments and news of a special T.S. Eliot event hosted by our friends at The London Library at one of London’s most charming historic venues next week. Read on!