Our round-up of Midas announcements from the week:
Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub on BBC London News
Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub appeared on BBC London News and was interviewed by Alpa Patel about his extraordinary medical career and time working at London’s Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals. The lifesaving cardiac work pioneered by Sir Magdi is detailed for the first-time ever in the moving biography, A Surgeon and a Maverick, by veteran journalists Simon Pearson and Fiona Gorman. This incredible book from AUC Press is truly a testament to an incredible man, who is still carrying out vital research into the heart, despite being well into his 80s.
The Private Eye Annual returns for 2023
Celebrating its 27th year, the Private Eye Annual returns to take stock of the year that was 2023, with its trademark satire, acerbic cartoons, jokes, parodies and topical sketches. Edited by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop – team captain for Have I Got News For You – the Annual is a perennial Christmas bestseller and seasonal institution.
Bookshop.org Book Lover Spotlight
To celebrate Black History Month in October, we worked with Bookshop.org to spotlight four different Bookstagrammers and their favourite Black authors and book titles. Vivi Koroma Kala aka @thecultured.life featured a list of 10 non-fiction picks by Black female authors; Femi aka @thebookalert created a list of books that taught her something new; Amina aka @AminasBookshelf shared a list of debut novels by Black authors; and Joel Rochester aka @fictionalfates selected 23 books by some of their favourite Black British writers.
Bookshop Day BookTok activity
For Bookshop Day 2023 on Saturday 14 October, we collaborated with Books Are My Bag and a selection of the best UK BookTokers to create content celebrating all bookshops across the nation. With a gifted National Book Token and limited-edition Bookshop Day tote bag, designed by Poonam Mistry, the BookTokers visited their local bookshops on Bookshop Day, creating lovely vlog-style content along the way. The bookish creators who took part in this year’s campaign were: caitlinreadsbooks, tiggysbooks, amymaybooks, whatbritreads, joe.reads, anya.reads, marcereads_, loverofpages, exlibrisjessica, samfallingbooks, readwithmeg, emilymiahreads, ellasimpsforbooks, and nicolereads.
Audible x The Women’s Prize Trust Discoveries Class of 2023
We celebrated the Audible x The Women’s Prize Trust Discoveries Class of 2023 with a tour of the Audible studios and a delicious lunch at the Wolseley! The Discoveries Prize champions aspiring female writing talent across the UK and we loved hearing from this year’s shortlistees about their writing journey so far.
The Women’s Prize Trust Discoveries writing programme is run in partnership with Audible, Curtis Brown and the Curtis Brown Creative writing school. All six shortlisted writers are offered a mentoring session with a Curtis Brown agent plus a free six-week online course with Curtis Brown Creative. They’ll also take part in a bespoke two-week writing development course, led by author Charlotte Mendelson, designed and delivered by Curtis Brown Creative, as well as attending a studio session on writing and recording for audio with Audible. Unlike most initiatives of this kind, writers are not required to have finished their novel, and Discoveries is completely free to enter. To find out more about the Class of 2023, visit this link.
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