A decade ago, a bored tweet landed standup comedian and singer Mitch Benn a book deal. “I am a big, shambling doofus,” says Benn, a fixture on TV and radio, especially BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show. So Benn went straight to Orion’s offices, and asked to speak to the person in charge of Gollancz’s Twitter account. I'd always gazed in envy at the literary world and for a year I'd been part of it, been to literary festivals and done readings, and I absolutely loved it. A couple of years later, when Liz Hyder’s Bearmouth did the same and won a clutch of awards, Benn felt “like roadkill”.

Source: The Guardian January 28, 2021 06:56 UTC