Everywhere I look people are straining to see or touch her and mouthing the three

Everywhere I look, people are straining to see or touch her, and mouthing the three words which have gained an almost magical status in the Asian community over the past three years: "Goodness.. Gracious... Only the day before, a straw poll conducted at my behest in the office of the entertainment magazine Heat revealed that few of the showbiz journalists there even recognised her name. "Maybe it's the sort of work she does," said one of them sniffily in explanation "She does a lot of low impact stuff. Also, I don't think people read new novels as much as people like to believe." But Meera Syal is not just an award-winning novelist. She's also one of the most unexpectedly successful comedy actor-writers since the prime of the Monty Python team. The small, bemused looking woman in black shouts across the staring crowds, lapsing into her native West Midlands as her bodyguard pushes her onward: "Fucking madness, in't it?" Everywhere, people are nudging one another, pointing, stopping what they were doing She seems surprised by the attention So am I. One of the best captures the excruciating awkwardness of that first date to the cinema from both the boy's perspective as well as the girl's in just a few pages.

There is a fresh, raw and vital energy to Foster's language and use of imagery Tiny details of daily life explode across the page. I have no doubt that his first novel will be well worth reading and that we have a very good and original writer in the making.. These ones left me feeling unsatisfied and slightly embarrassed by their naivety. However as the stories mature, the writing blossoms and intrigues, as it presents snapshots of a young man growing up in Stoke- on-Trent. Two reviewers in the Times and the Sunday Times decided to stick the knife in and I have some sympathy with them, for the writing, particularly in the first two stories, is at times self-conscious and unpolished, reminiscent of student English essays.

First stories in any collection need to hit the reader with a bullet. So it is a bit rum for Julian to complain when his plan backfired slightly, given that there was no way any reviewer could tell from the book that the stories were written before the author went to Norwich rather than as a result of it. Literary editors must find it hard to ignore students of this prestigious programme when it has produced some excellent writers, such as Ian McEwan and Rose Tremain. Thanks to our publicity department the book was reviewed widely but for many reviewers it was as though the name UEA provided a licence to be rather severe. Steve is a fabulous writer and we're looking forward to publishing his novel. But in future we will probably keep silent about UEA."KF: This slight collection of stories received an astonishing amount of coverage for a first book, and I suspect that mentioning that the author had just graduated from UEA on the inside back flap helped generate those reviews.

They were at once colloquial and lyrical, mostly about growing up in Stoke-on-Trent and they were clearly written by someone who'd done many things other than sit in a room and write. It's always an issue, how to get a first book review attention. This problem is magnified several times when that first book is a collection of short stories. When we signed Steve, he was on the point of going to the creative writing programme at UEA, so we mentioned that when the book came out.