The Chicago Tribune announced today that author Elie Wiesel has been awarded the 2012 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for Lifetime Achievement.

Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, is most widely known for his book Night, an autobiographical account of his experiences as a concentration camp prisoner during World War II, which was first published in France in 1958 and has since has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the author over fifty books of fiction and nonfiction, and has received the United States Congressional Medal of Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Nobel Peace Prize. 

"We are deeply honored to bestow the Chicago Tribune Literary Award upon Elie Wiesel, a man revered around the world as a living symbol of human rights," said Gerould Kern, editor of the Tribune. "Drawing upon his personal experiences as a Holocaust survivor, Mr. Wiesel's words have passionately and powerfully fought injustice and intolerance. He is a champion of the human spirit's capacity to overcome evil."

The Tribune also announced the 2012 recipients of the Heartland Prizes, which are given annually for works of fiction and nonfiction that "reinforce and perpetuate the values of Heartland America."

Novelist and short story writer Richard Ford won the prize in fiction for his novel Canada (Ecco, 2012), part of a series of novels that has garnered Ford both a Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Paul Hendrickson was awarded the prize in nonfiction for Hemingway’s Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961 (Knopf, 2011).

"The Chicago Tribune Literary Prize and the Heartland Awards for fiction and nonfiction reflect the Tribune's dedication to literature and the spread of ideas and enlightenment," Kern said. "We truly are honored to recognize the work of writers who have made such enormous contributions to our culture."

The Heartland Prizes were established in 1988. The Literary Prize was first awarded in 2002, and has included such recipients as Margaret Atwood, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Sam Shepard, and Tom Wolfe. 

Write an epistolary poem in which you apologize to the recipient of the letter. Read “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams and “I Had Just Hung Up From Talking to You” by Jessica Greenbaum for two examples.

Phren-Z, a new online literary magazine based in Santa Cruz, California, is currently accepting submissions for the first annual Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Contest.

The winner will receive $1,000, publication in the Winter 2012 issue of Phren-Z, and an invitation to read at the third annual Morton Marcus Memorial Reading at Cabrillo College on November 10. Poets may submit up to three poems, along with an eighteen-dollar entry fee, via Submittable by September 1. 

Founded this past February, Phren-Z is a quarterly publication whose mission is to celebrate the Santa Cruz literary community. The journal accepts general submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction by writers from Santa Cruz County year-round. The editors seek to publish “an eclectic mix of work from published and emerging writers reflecting the cultural and artistic influences and flavor of our community.” So far the magazine has published two issues; it's third, the Summer 2012 issue, will be released August 15.

The magazine is published by Santa Cruz Writes, a nonprofit organization that offers programming and support for writers from the Santa Cruz area.

The Morton Marcus Prize was established in honor of the Santa Cruz poet Morton Marcus, who passed away in 2009 and "whose life and work inspired the writing of many students, friends, and emerging poets."

To hear some of his work, take a look at a video of Morton Marcus reading at Cabrillo College in August of 2009.

On June 20, poet Diane Wakoski read with the Woodward Line Poetry Series at the Scarab Club in Detroit. Series coordinator Kim Hunter writes about her visit.

To get to Detroit’s Scarab Club art gallery, Diane Wakoski drove ninety miles to from East Lansing, Michigan, where she has been Michigan State University’s Poet in Residence and a professor since 1975. By the time you read this, she will have retired, capping an illustrious academic career. 

She also capped the 2011–2012 season for the Woodward Line Poetry Series, which runs from September through June. The decade-old series takes place in the century-old Scarab Club art gallery. The lower floor, where the reading took place, is an airy, brilliant white space with wooden floors. Wakoski read in front of a five-foot-long painting of a rooster and managed not to be upstaged.

The crowd of about thirty people ranged from college-aged attendees to fans who’d been following Wakoski’s work for decades. Though most seemed familiar at least with Wakoski’s longstanding reputation, if not her many publications, Wakoski’s reading style and ability to frame her work would have provided an excellent introduction to even the most poetry-phobic.

In addition, all of the evening’s selections were about films. She began the reading by noting the irony of having been born in southern California, but not having become interested in movies until she moved to New York and saw a French New Wave film by Jean-Luc Godard. It was then that she realized film could be art (another irony, since Hollywood inspired the French New Wave). Part of the publicity for the reading included a video posting of her paean to Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast (read by a Canadian radio host). 

During the question and answer session that followed the reading, I asked her if she saw any parallels between the structure of her very visual work and the structure of film. She replied that it was more that she liked films that were like her poems: films where the plot was merely a means to draw the audience into something deeper. Indeed, though her work referenced pop culture throughout the evening, she always moved deeper, as with “Beauty And The Beast,” to themes of desire and how we deceive ourselves with it and for it.

Photo: Diane Wakoski. Credit: Kim Hunter.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in Detroit 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.

The much anticipated longlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize—the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary award, given annually for a novel—was announced yesterday. Unlike previous years, when more established novelists comprised the longlist, many of this year's twelve contenders are emerging authors. Four of the titles are debuts, and three were published by small, independent presses.

“Goodness, madness, and bewildering urban change are among the themes of this year’s longlist,” said Peter Stothard, chair of the 2012 judges and editor of the Times Literary Supplement. “We did not set out to reject the old guard but, after a year of sustained critical argument by a demanding panel of judges, the new has come powering through.”

The finalists include: Nicola Barker for The Yips (Fourth Estate), Ned Beauman for The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre), André Brink for Philida (Harvill Secker), Tan Twan Eng for The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books), Michael Frayn for Skios (Faber & Faber), Rachel Joyce for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Doubleday), Deborah Levy for Swimming Home (And Other Stories), Hilary Mantel for Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate), Alison Moore for The Lighthouse (Salt), Will Self for Umbrella (Bloomsbury), Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis (Faber & Faber), and Sam Thompson for Communion Town (Fourth Estate).

The shortlist, which will include six finalists culled by the judges from the original twelve, will be announced on September 11, and the winner will be announced on October 16. Each of the shortlisted writers is awarded £2,500, and the winner receives £50,000.

Along with Stothard, the 2012 judges include Dinah Birch, Amanda Foreman, Dan Stevens, and Bharat Tandon. “To maintain the consistent excellence of the Man Booker Prize,” states the prize’s mission, “judges are chosen from a wide range of disciplines, including critics, writers and academics, but also poets, politicians, and actors, all with a passion for quality fiction.”

Finalist Hilary Mantel won the prize in 2009 for her novel Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate), the first in a trilogy of which her current long-listed title is the second installment. Julian Barnes won the 2011 prize for The Sense of an Ending (Random House).

Established as the Booker Prize in 1969, the annual award is given to residents of the United Kingdom, the British Commonwealth, and the Republic of Ireland for a novel published in the previous year. The next Man Booker International Prize, which is given biennially to a novelist from any country—and which Philip Roth last won in 2011—will be held in 2013.