PAGETURNER

NOW my favourite season hoves into view — autumn with its promise of fresh starts, cutural riches and evening classes. Starting late September, that ever evolving literary journal The Stinging Fly is running a Fiction Workshop in association with the Irish Writers Centre. They’re looking for authors who are in the early stages of writing a novel or a series of short stories, who feel they will benefit from a relationship with similarly minded folk. Under the direction of writer Sean O’Reilly (he wrote the acclaimed Love and Sleep among others) the group will meet once weekly in an evening workshop and present work in progress (a draft short story or novel excerpt) for close scrutiny. Just the job to get you off the couch and starting the book you always wanted to write. Email them at stingingfly@gmail.com

SOMETHING That Happened, The Saddest Story, First Impressions. Hardly the most alluring words in the English language and yet these were the working titles of three great novels — respectively Of Mice and Men, The Good Soldier, Pride and Prejudice. Oxford based Jonkers Rare Books recently published an entertaining blog detailing how some of the world’s best known books were originally titled. Gatsby lovers may well be aware that Fitzgerald toyed with Trimalchio in West Egg and Gone With The Wind aficionados know that Margaret Mitchell’s initial title was the last line of her Civil War epic — Tomorrow is Another Day. But who knew that Little Dorrit was once Nobody’s Fault, that Nabokov changed The Kingdom by the Sea to Lolita while George Orwell’s stunning 1984 was first The Last Man in Europe? Strangers from Within was deemed too absurd by the publishers, so an editor came up with Lord of the Flies and Ayn Rand’s husband suggested Atlas Shrugged instead of The Strike while Tolstoy discarded the Shakespearean All’s Well That Ends Well in favour of War and Peace. They’d make great quiz questions though no prizes for guessing what a novel first titled Atticus was finally called. AND while we’re with unforgettable titles, Amy Schumer’s candid memoir The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo debuts later this month from Harper Collins and she’s headed this way as part of a European tour. Currently rated the hottest comedian Stateside, she’s appearing at the 3Arena on August 26.

Creator, producer, and star of the award-winning series Inside Amy Schumer, she also wrote and starred in the comedy film Trainwreck. Schumer’s come a long way from her Long Island high school where she was voted Teacher’s Worst Nightmare — mind you she probably considered it an accolade of the highest order.