Poets & Writers Blogs

This morning, the Man Booker Foundation announced that beginning in 2016, the Man Booker International Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize will merge to form one annual award for an individual work of fiction translated into English. The reconfigured Man Booker International Prize will divide an award of £50,000 equally between author and translator. Each of the six shortlisted authors and translators will also receive £1,000.

Established in 2005, the Man Booker International Prize has until now awarded one prize of £60,000 biennially to “a living author for a body of work representing an achievement in fiction on the world stage.” Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai won the prize in 2015. The annual Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (IFFP), meanwhile, honored a single work of fiction translated into English. A prize of  £10,000 was split equally between author and translator. The 2015 winner was Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days (Portobello Books), translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.

Jonathan Taylor, chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, said in a press conference that the Man Booker International Prize loses momentum by being awarded every two years instead of annually, and hopes the “reconfiguration of the prize will encourage a greater interest and investment in translation."

Independent senior writer Boyd Tonkin will serve as the 2016 Man Booker International Prize chair. The longlist for the new Man Booker International Prize will be announced in March 2016, followed by the shortlist announcement in April; the winner will be announced in May. Books translated into English and published between January 1, 2015, and April 30, 2016, are eligible for the award.

Poets & Writers' fifth annual Los Angeles Connecting Cultures Reading took place on June 11, 2015, before a packed house at Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center. Eleven writers representing P&W–supported organizations Alexandria House, Literary Soul Symposium, Los Angeles Poet Society, Red Hen Press, and Wellness Works, Glendale came together to celebrate the diversity of the SoCal literary community and Poets & Writers' Readings & Workshops program. R&W (West) program assistant B Spaethe blogs about this lively annual event.

“As I now watch from the sidelines, and see all of the remarkable women in the military today, I stand here to tell you they deserve a military institution worthy of them. They deserve to be safe.” Cheers erupted as Terre Fallon Lindseth of Wellness Works, Glendale read from her essay, “Be All That You Can Be.” Wellness Works, Glendale is a nonprofit veteran welcome center that aims to facilitate self-healing for veterans and their families and is one of five organizations who shared stories at the event.

Connecting Cultures is a reading series put together by P&W’s Readings & Workshops program in both Los Angeles and New York City in order to showcase a variety of diverse organizations funded by the program. Each year, the blend is unique and this year was no exception.

Alexandria House, a nonprofit transitional residence and house of hospitality for women and children, brought two brilliant readers: Sandy Fredrick, whose story explores the tumultuous world of a girl who gets caught in a drug deal, and Tabia Salimu (QueenMama Tabia) whose story gives a vivacious anthem to the power and allure of the black man. In addition, Director Judy Vaughan spoke about the rise of homelessness in Los Angeles and a need for places like Alexandria House.

GLBT-supporting Literary Soul Symposium unleashed the tenacity of Toni Newman who told her moving story of transitioning from male to female. Newman’s book I Rise: The Transformation of Toni Newman is the first memoir written by a member of the African-American transgender community. Dontá Morrison also read with high emotion about the love of two men falling apart in a hospital room.

Other highlights included the locally-focused Los Angeles Poet Society, introduced by Jessica Wilson Cardenas who brought Alexis Rhone Fancher, her sultry work a highlight of any event. Celeste Gainey read from her book the GAFFER, published by Red Hen Press's imprint Arktoi Books which was established by former Los Angeles poet laureate Eloise Klein Healy. Gainey's energy was infectious as she read about being the first woman gaffer to be admitted to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).

A blog post can’t fully capture the power of these voices in one room together or the sound of pens scratching down contact information and cards swapping hands so that there can be further dialogue. At the end of the night, we felt opened up to one another. Jessica Wilson Cardenas said, "I can't wait to work with some of these writers! I've already invited many of them to collaborate with the Los Angeles Poet Society."

See more highlights in these photos and videos from the Los Angeles Connecting Cultures 2015 event.

Photo: (top) Terre Fallon Lindseth. Photo Credit: B Spaethe
Photo: (bottom) 2015 Los Angeles Connecting Cultures Group. Front: (L-R) Jessica Wilson Cardenas, B Spaethe, Jamie FitzGerald, Celeste Gainey, Terre Fallon Lindseth, Leilani Squire, Richard Modiano. Back: (L-R) Juan Cardenas, Dontá Morrison, Toni Newman, Sandy Fredrick, Judy Vaughan,Tabia Salimu, Glenn Schiffman, Ramon Garcia.

Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by the James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Adrienne Perry blogs about her P&W-supported writers of color workshop and reading at Writespace in Houston, Texas. Perry earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College and is a PhD student in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston. She serves as the current Editor of Gulf Coast and is a Kimbilio Fellow. Perry's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tidal Basin Review, Copper Nickel, and Indiana Review. She is at work on a novel and a collection of short stories. 

Some of the best advice I’ve heard about writing came from a high school guidance counselor. When seniors grew nervous about writing college essays, she calmed them down by saying their job was simply to: “Tell a story. Tell a story only you can tell. Tell it in your own voice.” In her view, if the college essay met those three criteria, the student had investigated their life and experience enough to say something unique, something that mattered to them and would be more likely to matter to admissions officers combing through hundreds of personal narratives.   

I’ve carried the “tell a story, tell a story only you can tell” advice around for years, even sharing it with my own college counselees, but I had never run it by creative writers. This April, I decided to share it with my writers of color workshop at Writespace in Houston. What happened? It became a mantra seeping into the workshop rhetoric. One of the frustrations I’ve heard from writers of color, in this workshop and elsewhere, is that people so often make unconscious assumptions about the kinds of stories writers of color will tell and the voices those stories will be in.

Telling our own stories in our own voices takes courage and pushes the imaginations of both white and nonwhite readers. Charles Redd shared that our writers of color workshop “created something special in me, [and was] impacted by shared experiences.” Another writer from the workshop, Ima Oduok, wrote in an e-mail: “When I saw Writespace was hosting a workshop for writers of color, I was ecstatic. The literary world is still mostly filled with white men, and that imbalance makes me hold back in other workshops or conferences. There's an unspoken, unsubtle message that literature is not for us. Workshops, such as this one, invite those who would normally be shy about developing.”

On the last day of the workshop, we ended early and held a reading. For a city as racially and ethnically diverse as Houston, this reading and this workshop at Writespace were both, in some ways, a first. And except for one or two of the writers, the reading was a personal first, too. The Writespace studio is small and cozy, so we took the long tables into the hallway and set up tight rows of chairs, wondering who would come to hear us telling stories only we could tell and in our own voices. Turns out, quite a few. By the time the reading started, the room was packed.

The man who made perfectly shaved ice in San Antonio, a waitress who used a Taser on an attacker after a late night shift, a woman unwinding from a night of partying on a balcony in Virginia Beach, the dissolution of a marriage as seen through a favorite TV show—each reading was singular, a reminder that not only should we write the stories only we can tell, but that doing so in a workshop for writers of color can be a powerful part of that process.

Photo: Adrienne Perry. Credit: Lesli Vollrath.

Support for Readings & Workshops events in Houston is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Submissions are currently open for Southern Poetry Review’s Guy Owen Award, given annually for a poem. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Southern Poetry Review.

Submit three to five poems totaling no more than ten pages with a $20 entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription to Southern Poetry Review, by June 15. Submissions can be made via the online submission system or via postal mail to Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, Armstrong Atlantic State University, 11935 Abercorn Street, Savannah, GA 31419.

Southern Poetry Review staff established the Guy Owen Award in 2002. Recent winners include Traci Rae Letellier for “Outlaw Country,” chosen by the late Claudia Emerson; Janet Smith for “The Children’s Section,” chosen by Arthur Smith; Susan Schmidt for “If They Came Our Way,” chosen by Kathryn Stripling Byer; and Catherine Staples for “Red Rover,” chosen by Carl Dennis. Established in 1958, Southern Poetry Review is published biannually.

Photo: the current issue (Volume 52, Issue 2) of Southern Poetry Review

Submissions are currently open for the Bard College Fiction Prize, given annually to a fiction writer under the age of 40 who has published at least one full-length work of fiction. The winner will receive $30,000 and a one-semester appointment as writer-in-residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The recipient must give at least one public lecture and meet informally with students but is not expected to teach traditional courses.

Submit three copies of a published book of fiction, a cover letter, and a curriculum vitae by June 15. There is no application fee. Submissions can be made via postal mail to P.O. Box 5000, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Established in 2001, the Bard Fiction Prize is “intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction to pursue their creative goals and provide an opportunity to work in a fertile and intellectual environment.” Recent recipients include Laura van den Berg for her second story collection, The Isle of Youth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013); Bennett Sims for his debut novel, A Questionable Shape (Two Dollar Radio, 2013); Brian Conn for his debut novel, The Fixed Stars (Fiction Collective 2, 2010); and Benjamin Hale for his debut novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve, 2011).

The Bard College Written Arts department offers an undergraduate major but no graduate degree in creative writing. Core faculty members include Benjamin Hale, Michael Ives, Porochista Khakpour, Ann Lauterbach, Joseph O’Neill, Susan Fox Rogers, and Mona Simpson.

Dan Godston teaches and lives in Chicago. His chapbooks include Splice Poems (Argotist Ebooks, 2012) and Sonic Textures Triptych (Linguiscope Books, 2010), and his writings have appeared in RHINO, Chase Park, After Hours, Beard of Bees, Drunken Boat, Horse Less Review, and other publications. Godston also directs the Borderbend Arts Collective.

The Borderbend Arts Collective presents boundary-pushing arts programming by connecting artists with communities to create year-round musical, literary, and multi-arts programs involving new and unique arts practices. A big part of Borderbend’s programming involves community arts and multidisciplinary collaborations—such as the “Armitage Arts: Summer Edition” program that we are presenting during Night Out in the Parks. We are grateful to receive support from Poets & Writers to help present this program at Chicago’s Mozart Park on June 24.

The poets include Elizabeth Marino, Steven Schroeder, Janina Ciezadlo, Charlie Newman and Wayne Allen Jones, and the musicians include Adam Zanolini (flute, saxophone, djembe, electric bass), Angel Elmore (clarinet, piano), Lou Ciccotelli (drums), and Dan Godston (cornet, small instruments). This program is part of an ongoing cultural corridor-building initiative along West Armitage Avenue. Other Armitage Arts programs have included the 2014 Armitage Arts Festival and events at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center and Rosa’s Lounge.

Several years ago Tim Hunt and Allan Johnston performed with Chicago Phonography at the Evanston Art Center, with support from the Poets & Writers' Readings & Workshops Program. The audience that evening was treated to sonic combinations of poetry by Hunt and Johnston with CP’s real and imaginary soundscapes, surrounded by the eye-popping CUT paper art installation in the gallery.

Our upcoming program at Mozart Park is another example of Borderbend’s ongoing commitment to fostering multimedia collaborations, and connecting talented local artists with appreciative audiences. I look forward to experiencing the simpatico cross-disciplinary imaginings and juxtapositions that will be sparked during the program. The program is just a few days after the summer solstice, and is a great way to kick off the summer. All are invited to come and join in the fun.

“Armitage Arts: Summer Edition” is presented as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks with the support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Arts programming in neighborhoods across the city advances the goals of the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Cultural Plan.

Photo: (top) Adam Zanolini, Lou Ciccotelli  Photo Credit: Kristen Brown

Photo: (bottom) Janinai Ciezadlo. Photo Credit: Rob Kameczuna.

Support for Readings & Workshops events in Chicago is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others.  Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Submissions are currently open for the 2015 Munster Literature Center Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. A cash award of €1,000 (approximately $1,090) and publication by Southword Editions is given for a poetry chapbook. Emerging and established poets from any country are eligible to apply.

One runner-up will receive €500 (approximately $545); both first- and second-place winners will receive fifty copies of their chapbooks. The winning chapbooks will be nominated for the U.K. Forward Prize for best poem and anthology, and winners will be invited to read their work at the 2016 Cork Spring Poetry Festival. The deadline to enter is May 31.

Submit a poetry manuscript between 16 and 25 single-spaced pages, along with a cover letter and a €25 entry fee, to foolforpoetry@munsterlit.ie. Poets based in the U.K. and Ireland may submit their manuscripts via postal mail to The Munster Literature Centre, Frank O’Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland. Multiple manuscript entries are accepted. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The Munster Literature Centre established the Fool for Poetry Chapbook competition in 2005. Previous winners include Virginia Astley and Victoria Kennefick.

Founded in Cork, Ireland, in 1993, the Munster Literature Centre hosts festivals, workshops, readings, and other events to promote and celebrate literature.