Biblio File best practitioner interview

I was in Ireland recently to interview two of the best novelists on the face of the planet. , and David Mitchell, in Cork. As a cost-cutting measure I decided to ask them both the same questions: What do you do? How do you do it? Why do you do…

No such thing she informed me. So we talked about the “non-role.” Combatative she is. Just like Tim Parks. He talks with me here about the other end of the spectrum, the reader. How to be a better one. I want him to be prescriptive, he won’t be. But…

Marta Sylvestrova is a curator and art critic, and has headed the graphic design department at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic, since 1986. She is a graduate of Masaryk University where she studied art history, and has, over the…

Nic Bottomley is a bookseller, and co-owner with his wife Juliette of Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, an independent bookshop based in Bath that has twice been named UK Independent Bookshop of the Year. Prior to setting up shop Nic was…

The Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri Booksellers School was founded in 1983 by Luciano Mauri in memory of his father and his daughter, who died prematurely. “In the course of almost thirty years of teaching activity it has trained new generations of…

Ricky Cavallero was CEO of the Spanish-language publisher Random House Mondadori for eight years. In 1995 he joined Mondadori as Director of Marketing Books; two years later he was appointed General Manager of the Spanish subsidiary and launched…

Matteo Columbo is Margaret Atwood’s publicist and personal magician at the Ponte alle Grazie publishing house in Italy. We met in Milan to discuss, among other things, the relationship between magic and publicity, the things that Margaret’s handlers…