I have to admit to a slight obsession with the Writer's Rooms feature in the Saturday Guardian. The aspiring writer grabs at any information about the craft to use as a blueprint and from this series of photographs I have deduced a North London attic with a churchyard view is as vital as ink. (More so, if you write exclusively on a laptop.)

They had made a movie about us. The movie was based on a book written by someone we knew. The book was a simple thing about four weeks in the city we grew up in and

for the most part was an accurate portrayal.

Sometimes you publish a book that just seems easy. You love it. Everyone in-house loves it. The people you give it to, or send it to, also love it, whether they're booksellers, authors you're asking for advance quotes, reviewers, or whatever.

Watch a video of Frances Kay talking about her novel, Micka.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Emily Head, known by everyone, including her late husband Arthur and her daughter Tory, simply as Mrs Head, returned to London after a brief sojourn in the marshland village of Waseminster (Anglo-Saxon for the church in the mud, according to Tory's husband Donald), possessed of an unshakeable belief that her daughter, and London generally, needed her.

A is for Apple, Apple Records. I hadn't been a fan of the Beatles growing up and then sometime, in my mid-twenties I heard "Eleanor Rigby" for the millionth time and it occurred to me how brilliant, how much like poetry it was, and still, somehow a pop song. In writing , I went back to the Beatles' music quite a bit, especially Revolver and the White Album. I wanted the book to have the same willingness to throws its arms around everything, the way that particular record seems to cover all of twentieth century music, with a multitude of styles, tones, and voices.

The shortlist for regional winners has been unveiled in the race to win the influential 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

An interview between author Miguel Syjuco and critic Marcel Avellaneda.