Willy Vlautin’s Everyday People
Willy Vlautin has won the Joyce Carol Oates prize for his heartbreaking novel **The Horse.** The Bee met up with him to talk about his hard-living characters, Trump, and his worst-ever job.
Archive
The Working Class Library Episode 2: Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
Louise Doughty joins us to consider the place of Hilary Mantel’s memoir in our library.
An Introduction to Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
Her working-class background was overlooked, but the double-Booker winner said it determined how she saw the world.
Publishing’s Class Problem
When you’re a child, your social class doesn’t determine how good you are at reading and writing. Yet half of our published writers are from middle-class backgrounds, and only 10 per cent are working class. Why?
Confessions of Nothing
How I revolutionised mascara at the age of seven in my mum’s car and how she didn’t understand.
The Working Class Library Episode 1: New Grub Street by George Gissing
Gissing expert Simon James joins us to consider how **New Grub Street** became so topical again, and to ask if it deserves a place in our fantasy library.
An Introduction to New Grub Street
How the troubled George Gissing inspired Orwell, and foretold the influence of Amazon, BookTok and poverty porn.
Plastic Venus
**“Life was hard in the city over the river. The summer’s riots still smouldered. Then one day, a car crossed the river. A Merc, with windows tinted darker than the night.”**
Hickling Hands
**“From the top of the hilly field, he looked down to the factories where he used to work, dog treats, loose change and his phone jangling in his fleece pocket.”** Mie Murasa looks back on her friendship with her grandad in Noughties Sheffield.
Procurement Process Blues
How did it become so hard to get paid what you’re owed?
A Class of Our Own
The world needs more working-class writers. The Bee is going to find, nurture and publish them.
On the Joys of Secretly Reading at Work
Are books more enjoyable when read in unusual places?
