Ella Creamer

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ella Creamer |Lucy Knight

Helena Bonham Carter, Toby Jones and Asa Butterfield are among actors performing poems in memory of family members and friends who have died, to mark Celebration Day later this month. The initiative, conceived in 2022 by high-profile figures including Stephen Fry, Prue Leith, film director Oliver Parker and writer and poetry curator Allie Esiri, sets aside a day in the calendar each year to celebrate the lives of lost loved ones, inspired by celebrations such as Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ella Creamer

A novel about a Palestinian woman who participates in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags has won this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize. Palestinian journalist Yasmin Zaher took home the £20,000 prize – awarded to writers aged 39 or under in honour of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who died at that age – for her debut novel The Coin. She was announced as the winner at a ceremony in Swansea, Thomas’s birthplace.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ella Creamer

Nigerian writer Abi Daré has won the inaugural Climate fiction prize for her novel And So I Roar, the follow-up to her bestselling debut The Girl with the Louding Voice. Daré was announced as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Wednesday evening. “I am still slightly stunned but so honoured and thrilled,” she said.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ella Creamer

Wooden carved statues of JRR Tolkien and his wife, Edith, will be unveiled in an East Yorkshire village next month, celebrating the area’s influence on the writer. Tolkien spent nearly 18 months in Hull and East Yorkshire while recovering from trench fever during the first world war, and the area’s landscape is believed to have inspired his works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ella Creamer

Actors Channing Tatum and Pedro Pascal have written poems for a new anthology curated by Canadian musician and poet Mustafa that also includes contributions by the writers George Saunders, Max Porter and Hanif Abdurraqib. The book, titled Nour, explores themes of ceremony, loss and worship. “You told me God wasn’t real/ as we sat in the water in the dark that night/ I couldn’t see your eyes but I could feel the anger/ in the water”, opens Tatum’s poem, extracted below along with Pascal’s.