Heathrow Airport’s Writer-in-Residence

Via guardian.co.uk

Passengers jetting off from Heathrow on their summer holidays this week will be facing more than just delays: if they’re not careful, they may also find themselves appearing in novelist Tony Parsons’ new book.

The lad lit author and journalist has been hired as the airport’s new writer-in-residence, and will be roaming the terminals over the next week looking for people and events, reunions and departures, to inspire his 13th book, a collection of short stories. Best known for his novel Man and Boy, Parsons will be living in a Heathrow hotel, spending his days meeting airport staff and travellers as he writes Departures: Seven Stories from Heathrow.

A fan of Arthur Hailey’s 1960s novel Airport, which traced the lives, loves and plane-related dramas of the people who worked and used a fictitious American airport, Parsons said he hoped to use his residency to resurrect the genre of “airport fiction”.

“Airports are places of extreme emotion where people come and go and experiences begin and end,” said the bestselling author. “Often when we travel we find ourselves in such a hurry to get to our end destination that we fail to appreciate the individual stories and moments happening before us. Having grown up reading Airport it feels like an incredible opportunity to live at Heathrow and write about the people whose lives are touched by it. I am looking forward to sharing these experiences and to reviving the airport fiction genre with my first short story collection.”