Salt author on Booker longlist

Many congratulations to Salt author Alison Moore for her Booker longlisting with her debut novel The Lighthouse, which I'm dying to read. It's wonderful that the Booker judges this year have avowedly backed innovation and the off-beat, and looked at 'novels not novelists, texts not reputations', and as another Salt author, I'm naturally thrilled at the endorsement this gives to our tiny, inspired and hardworking publisher. Congratulations also therefore to Jen and Chris Hamilton-Emery, who have steered Salt through some pretty hard times, quite often single- (no, I mean, double-) handedly - quite frankly, I don't really know how they've done it. And also to writer Nick Royle who recently joined Salt as an editor to begin his own list, of which Alison Moore's book is a first triumphant fruit.