Canadian authors on why people should read their books – Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias Makes the Hill Times Top 100 List

2013/12/21 Leave a comment

A nice way to end the year, being one of the 11 authors quoted in the top 100 list:

Andrew Griffith, author of Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resettling Citizenship and Multiculturalism. “We’re human beings. We’re a combination of our background, our training, our professional experience, so we actually have a fair number of built-in biases and views that we don’t normally think about. So it’s almost for the public servant at the individual level and the public service at the collective level, to know thyself and to know the limits of what just saying you’re part of the impartial neutral public service doesn’t make you automatically impartial and neutral. You actually do have your biases and you have to find ways to be more open with yourself in terms of when you’re providing advice or when you’re thinking through an issue, okay, am I being objective here, or is my objective analysis being coloured by some of the biases that are part of me. It’s a hard process to do.”

via Canadian authors on why people should read their books | hilltimes.com.

Filed under Citizenship, Government, Multiculturalism, Public Policy Tagged with , ,

Last day for 30% sale of paper version of my books

2013/12/05 Leave a comment

Reminder last day of Lulu’s pre-Christmas sale for my and other books. 30 percent off Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias: Resetting Citizenship and Multiculturalism and Living with Cancer: A Journey.

Valid till midnight today. Promotion code is LULUVIP160199. 

Book shop link is Lulu – Policy Arrogance (also has link for Living with Cancer).

Filed under Citizenship, Multiculturalism, Public Policy Tagged with , ,

If you want to be an author, the worst thing you can do is get published

2013/10/28 Leave a comment

While certainly not my problem (would be so lucky), telling the amount of time authors have to spend on marketing and promotion. With my own Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, I spend at least as much time on marketing as I did on writing. The following description of what an agenda of a successful writer can look like is revealing:

Thus, at a time I desperately need to get my next first draft off the ground, check out my commitments for the next couple of months or so: multiple-hour interviews with Dutch and Belgian periodicals, along with the dreaded photo shoots. Literary festival appearances in London’s Soho, Charleston, Birmingham, Cheltenham, Newcastle, Folkestone, Cambridge, Wapping, and Bali (yeah, yeah, tell us another sob story—but Southeast Asia involves a 17-hour plane trip and a discombobulating seven-hour time difference; I still have to work on more than my tan). A reading of one of my short stories at the Arts Club in London. Dinners with my publisher and editor to discuss a new imprint. Copious radio interviews. A ceremony for the National Short Story Award, for which I’m short-listed—and prizes are a particularly destructive time and emotion suck, since in most cases you don’t win. The delivery of a “sermon” in Manchester, which for an atheist will be a big ask. A formal lecture in Amsterdam, replete with mini author’s tour for the Dutch translation of my last novel. A panel on “storytelling” for Mumsnet. A presentation to prospective supporters of Standpoint magazine, for which I write a monthly column. An “in-conversation” for a medical conference. What already awaits in 2014? A reading at the Royal Academy, a two-week promotional tour of Australia, a six-week teaching residency in Falmouth, events in Muncie, Indiana, and Bath, and invitations, as yet mercifully unaccepted, to festivals in Alberta, Vancouver, Estonia, and Singapore.

If you want to be an author, the worst thing you can do is get published.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,