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As the dust settles from this year’s U.S. presidential election, think of a time in your youth when you participated in a school election or were involved with the student council. Were you optimistic of the changes that could be made? Did you vote with enthusiasm or take part in any protests? Write an essay reflecting on your experiences and what was important to you then, and how this might say something about who you are today.
This Friday marks the deadline for editors to nominate stories for a new annual fiction prize. Sponsored by PEN America and Catapult, the inaugural PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers honors twelve emerging fiction writers for debut short stories published in the previous year. Twelve winning writers will each receive a prize of $2,000, and their stories will be included in an annual anthology, The PEN America Best Debut Short Stories, to be published by Catapult.
Debut stories published in online magazines, cultural websites, or print magazines distributed in the U.S. in 2016 are eligible. A debut story is defined by PEN as the writer’s first short story publication that has undergone an editorial review process and has been accepted and published by a publication with which the author is not professionally affiliated. Authors must be either U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents.
Using the online submission system, editors of participating publications may submit up to four stories of no more than 12,000 words each, along with the required eligibility and consent form, by Friday, November 11. Authors may not submit their own work. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
The winners will be honored at the annual PEN Literary Awards ceremony in New York City.
Launched this year, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize aims to help launch the careers of new writers. The award is named for and supported by the family of Robert J. Dau, a Petoskey, Michigan–based arts advocate who passed away last year.
The Saharan silver ant is able to survive in the extreme temperatures of the Sahara Desert, which often reaches almost 120 degrees Fahrenheit, with the help of physiological adaptations including highly reflective hairs that deflect the sun’s rays and longer legs, keeping them further above the hot sand. Write a short story that explores how a human character adapts when placed in a geographical location with extreme atmospheric conditions. Is your character alone or part of a pack? You may choose to write a story based in reality, or one that incorporates elements of the fantastic.
“By existing in a cinematic space, Shakespeare can feel alive and present,” says Ross Williams, founder of the nonprofit New York Shakespeare Exchange, whose film project Maya C. Popa writes about in “The Shakespeare Sonnet Project” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. The project aims to collect videos of each of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets performed by actors in different locations in New York City, with a future series to be filmed in locations in the rest of the country and abroad. Browse through some of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and choose one that reminds you of a place you know, or which evokes a site-specific memory. Write your own sonnet in response, bringing phrases and ideas used almost half a millennium ago into the present by incorporating cinematic imagery of a contemporary locale.
Rachel Valinsky is a cofounder of Wendy’s Subway, a nonprofit library and writing space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. As an independent curator, writer, and translator, she has presented projects at Judson Memorial Church, Lisa Cooley, and Spectacle Theater, and written for East of Borneo, Millennium Film Journal, BOMB, C Magazine, and the Third Rail. She is the editor of Warm Equations (Édition Patrick Frey, 2016) and a contributing editor at Éditions Lutanie, Paris. Valinsky is currently a doctoral student in Art History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Since the founding of Wendy’s Subway in December 2013, we have been steadily growing a space for writing and thinking across disciplines. In January 2016, we moved to a new storefront space, which comfortably houses our collection of over three thousand books, periodicals, and printed matter, as well as the Laurin Raiken Archive, an extensive resource for the study of art history and criticism. During the day, the space is open for writing, and on some evenings, we host public programs, including readings and screenings, interdisciplinary talks and lectures, discussion and reading groups, as well as writing workshops. Open to the public, we welcome readers to consult our non-circulating library. Likewise, our membership actively contributes to the operations of the organization, by taking part in the daily life of the space, writing together, and conceiving of projects that are developed independently or as a group, with peers and friends from Wendy’s and beyond.
In 2015, we launched a mobile Reading Room project. Designed by Tyler Polich and Hannah Wilentz, the Reading Room has been presented at a variety of locations in and outside of New York, in each case directly engaging with the context and site of the invitation. It has addressed the topics of experimental writing, visual art, and digital media (for Brown University’s Interrupt 3 conference and “From Line to Constellation” group exhibition) and place and revolution (for Open Engagement’s 2015 conference at the Carnegie Mellon School of Art), among others. At NADA New York in May 2015, Wendy’s Subway partnered with the Mexico City-based library Aeromoto to present a selection of books by Latin American publishers, paired with books in our collection. Central to the mission of the Reading Room is to develop close partnerships and conversations with exhibiting or presenting artists.
As I write this, we’re preparing for a Political Therapy workshop, led by artist Liz Magic Laser and certified life coach Valerie Bell, which is meant to help participants confront and express their mounting frustrations in the face of this year’s presidential election. The workshop will take place in the Reading Room we’ve installed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) for the Next Wave Festival, which lasts all fall. Here, the collection of nearly four hundred books on display focuses on performance, dramaturgy, theater, dance, choreography, and poetics while also highlighting titles chosen by the artists performing in the festival and the visual artists whose work is exhibited across BAM’s many locations. In the lower lobby of the BAM Fisher Building, the Next Wave Reading Room is a fixture of the festival, open to the public every day for browsing and extended reading.
This is the first time, however, that we have been able to organize a series of public programs with the Reading Room that systematically extend the collections’ reach to wider audiences. With readings and workshops every month of our stay at BAM, we’ve brought in diverse communities of writers, artists, performers, and enthusiasts of all kinds for interdisciplinary programs.
This past October, a program pairing six writers and performers, one of several in this series to receive generous support from Poets & Writers, drew over a hundred audience members. The Reading Room was packed, yet the surprising and meaningful resonances that echoed across each set of readings made for a very intimate evening—one that reminded me of the intimate feel of our space in Bushwick, where we can comfortably accommodate forty people. Supporting writers gave them more resources to develop connections across their work—connections which reverberated across the Reading Room and speak to the collaborative mission of Wendy’s Subway.
Follow the projects and adventures of Wendy’s Subway on Instagram.
Photos: (top) Wendy’s Subway Reading Room at BAM Fisher designed by Tyler Polich and Hannah Wilentz. Photo credit: Greg Bosse. (bottom) Drawing of several Wendy’s Subway board members and friends at the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, AWP Offsite Program. Drawing by Matt Longabucco.
Editor’s Note: Wendy’s Subway cofounder Carolyn Bush passed away on September 28. Contributions to a fundraiser in her honor will go in part to Wendy’s Subway, “to continue the legacy she started.”
Support for Readings & Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Last night at a ceremony in Austin, Texas, Kirkus Reviews announced the winners of the third annual Kirkus Prize. Three awards of $50,000 each are given for a book of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature published in the previous year.
C. E. Morgan won the fiction award for her second novel, The Sport of Kings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Fiction writer Claire Messud, bookseller Annie Philbrick, and Kirkus Reviews critic Gene Seymour judged.
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Susan Faludi took home the nonfiction prize for In the Darkroom (Metropolitan). Writer Jim Piechota, bookseller Chris Schoppa, and journalist and novelist Héctor Tobar judged.
Jason Reynolds won the young readers’ literature prize for his novel As Brave As You (Caitlyn Dlouhy). Bookseller and author Elizabeth Bluemle, Kirkus critic and librarian Deborah D. Taylor, and National Book Award–winning author Jacqueline Woodson judged.
The winners were selected from 1,154 titles that received a Kirkus starred review between November 1, 2015, and October 31, 2016, for fiction and nonfiction, and between October 1, 2015, and September 30, 2016, for young readers’ literature.
One of the world’s richest literary awards, the Kirkus Prize was established in 2014 to honor the eighty-first anniversary of Kirkus Reviews, a publication that today provides review coverage of more than seven thousand commercially published books, as well as more than three thousand self-published books, each year. For more information about the prize, as well as a list of finalists in each category, visit the Kirkus Reviews website.
(Photos from left: C. E. Morgan, Susan Faludi, Jason Reynolds)
“Sometimes the humor is a way to mask all that, so the reader won’t know that what I’m writing about is me, or figure out what side of the argument I stand on. Then there’s a risk in just trying to say what you mean to say…. Writing is a risk no matter what.” In a 2015 interview with Chris Jackson for the Paris Review, Paul Beatty, who was awarded the 2016 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout last week, speaks about the risks of criticizing and including heated topics in his writing. Think of a topic or stance you are personally drawn to—but also afraid of—writing about. Write a personal essay in which you gradually expose this risky issue or opinion in a humorous way. How can offbeat humor, satire, or a generally funny approach allow you to tackle difficult subjects in a more oblique way?
The deadline approaches for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, given annually for a book of poetry or fiction published in English in the previous year by an author between the ages of 18 and 39. The winner will receive £30,000.
Publishers may submit ten copies of a book published between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016, along with the required entry form, by Friday, November 4. Entries should be mailed to the International Dylan Thomas Prize, c/o Dr. Elaine Canning, Research Institute for Arts and Humanities, Keir Hardie Building, Room 405c, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.
There is no entry fee. Translations and self-published books are ineligible. E-mail or visit the website for complete guidelines.
The International Dylan Thomas Prize was established in 2006 in honor of Dylan Thomas, who, according to the website, was: “the quintessential adolescent writer, ideally suited to serve as an inspiration to young writers everywhere. The freshness and immediacy of his writing were qualities that he never lost. The Prize seeks to ensure that readers today will have the chance to savour the vitality and sparkle of a new generation of young writers.”
Recent winners of the prize include Max Porter for his novel, Grief Is a Thing With Feathers (Graywolf, 2016), Joshua Ferris for his novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (Little, Brown, 2014), and Claire Vaye Watkins for her story collection Battleborn (Riverhead, 2012).
The 2017 winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Swansea, Wales, in May.
As pollution levels worsen in many cities around the world, some enterprising companies have found a market for selling packages of bottled air from Wales (with a "morning dew feel"), as well as from Australian beaches and Canadian mountains. Write a short story that takes place in a world that has perfected the ability to conveniently bottle not just air, but other highly sought-after items, both tangible and intangible. What happens when emotional states and feelings, like happiness or love, can be bottled, sold, and bought?
Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday celebrated during the first two days of November in which family and friends commemorate the dead: gathering to tidy up tombs in the cemetery, presenting offerings on altars, eating and drinking, playing music, and telling stories. Write a poem that joyfully honors a loved one who has passed away—or that confronts death and mortality in a more general way—with a tone of both respect and celebration. How does imbuing the gravity of mortality with liveliness and vitality inspire you to think about imagery, rhythm, and diction in new ways?
