Neil LaBute is one of the most exciting new talents in theatre and film to have emerged in the 1990s. Influenced and inspired by such writers as David Mamet, Edward Bond and Harold Pinter, he is equally at home writing for the screen as for the stage, and the list of films he has written and directed includes The Wicker Man (2006), Possession (2002) and In the Company of Men (1998). As a playwright, screenwriter, director, and author of short stories, he has staked out a distinctive, and disturbing, territory. In the first full-length study on LaBute, Christopher Bigsby examines his darkly...

Offering both student and theatergoer a guide to one of the most celebrated living American dramatists, this volume covers the complete range of Mamet's writing, as well as his films, such as The Verdict and Wag the Dog. Additional chapters also explore Mamet and acting, Mamet as director, his fiction, and a survey of Mamet criticism. The Companion will prepare the reader for future work by this important and influential writer.

WRITERS IN CONVERSATION compiles Christopher Bigsby's interviews with the world's greatest writers from a decade of the Arthur Miller Centre's International Literary Festival at the University of East Anglia. These often candid, in-depth, witty and illuminating exchanges shine a light on the craft and profession of the working writer today. Volume 3 features interviews with Martin Amis, Alan Acykbourn, John Banville, John Banville, Cherie Blair, William Boyd, Andre Brink, Geraldine Brooks, A. S. Byatt, Jung Chang, Louis de Bernieres, Margaret Drabble, Richard Eyre, Richard Flanagan, Richard...

WRITERS IN CONVERSATION compiles Christopher Bigsby's interviews with the world's greatest writers from a decade of the Arthur Miller Centre's International Literary Festival at the University of East Anglia. These often candid, in-depth, witty and illuminating exchanges shine a light on the craft and profession of the working writer today. Volume 4 features interviews with David Leavitt, Doris Lessing, Penelope Lively, David Lodge, Javier Marias, Blake Morrison, Toni Morrison, John Mortimer, Michael Ondaatje, Stephen Poliakoff, Irina Ratushinskaya, Salman Rushdie, Nawal El Saadawi, Jane...

What if Edgar Allan Poe did not die, drunk on election day? What if he did not die at all? What if his planned escape from a life that oppressed him led him on a journey not only across an ocean but into the heart of darkness as he encountered those anxious to enroll him in their brotherhood? Christopher Bigsby takes a man renowned for his gothic tales, in which the buried return, and makes Poe himself the target of those with a taste for blood who are prepared to follow him until they judge him ready to join them. Poe, or the Revenant is a story worthy of Poe himself and who is to know where...

WRITERS IN CONVERSATION compiles Christopher Bigsby's interviews with the world's greatest writers from a decade of the Arthur Miller Centre's International Literary Festival at the University of East Anglia. These often candid, in-depth, witty and illuminating exchanges shine a light on the craft and profession of the working writer today.

Something has happened in the world of television drama. For the last decade and a half America has assumed a dominant position. Novelists, screenwriters and journalists, who would once have had no interest in writing for television, indeed who often despised it, suddenly realised that it was where America could have a dialogue with itself. The new television drama was where writers could engage with the social and political realities of the time, interrogating the myths and values of a society moving into a new century. Familiar genres have been reinvented, from crime fiction to science...

A lot of things happened in 1937. The Golden Gate Bridge opened and the New York Yankees won the World Series. Amelia Earhart went missing and the Hindenberg fell out of the sky. In Flint, Michigan, though, there was a strike by General Motors workers, a strike marked by violence. Watching this was a young girl of fourteen whose mother was dying. But a bad year became worse. Kidnapped by a gang of men she is taken into the heart of a particular darkness only to escape, pursued by still others. Looking back from the age of sixteen she tries to make sense of what has happened and the violence...

Henry James, John Buchan and Arthur Conan Doyle, unbeknown to one another, are all invited to a Swiss hotel where they have supposedly come to write in peace. When they arrive, however, they are informed that there has been a murder and that a mysterious figure charged to investigate would appreciate their help in solving the crime. Meanwhile, they write their stories. For Henry James it is one of intrigue involving Europe and America as a young man meets his match in more ways than one. For John Buchan it is an adventure story involving Richard Hannay, who we know from The Thirty-Nine Steps,...