Aimee Phan, author of The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, wrote in Writers Recommend, "I don’t intentionally scrapbook for inspiration, but that always ends up happening. I will see a graphic or image, or hear a song on the radio, and start to collect them for characters whose perspectives I am about to inhabit." Adopt Phan's practice as your own this week. Collect images, songs, magazine articles, matchbooks, etc., and begin to image how these items inform the perspective of a character you want to write about. After a week of collecting, write a character sketch.

In her essay "Total Eclipse" from Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (Harper Collins, 1982), Annie Dillard recalls traveling to the top of a mountain to witness a total solar eclipse. The darkness she discovered as the sun disappeared, in a world suddenly without light, was incomprehensible and terrifying, but also illuminating. "What I saw," she writes, "what I seemed to be standing in, was all the wrecked light that the memories of the dead could shed upon the living world." Write about a time when you disappeared into darkness—whether by your own choosing or not—and emerged again into the light, with a new understanding.

Imagine today that the universe is trying to send you a message. Try to see everything through this imagined perspective. Take note of the day's incidentals that are working to convey this message to you: the guy walking toward you on the street wearing your brother's favorite color, the petals of the same color blowing in the wind, a sign you notice with a saying that strikes you, how the quality of light conjures a past event. Write a poem using these collected images and impressions that reveals the message.

The Twittersphere heated up this afternoon after news broke that no Pulitzer Prize would be awarded for fiction published in 2011. The finalists for the award, also revealed today, were Denis Johnson for Train Dreams (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Karen Russell for Swamplandia! (Knopf), and the late David Foster Wallace for The Pale King (Little, Brown). No explanation has been given regarding the decision to withhold the prize, a move that last occurred in 1977, except that the choice was up to the Pulitzer board, and not this year's judges, Maureen Corrigan, Michael Cunningham, and Susan Larson.

On Twitter, Publishers Marketplace news editor Sara Weinman (@sarahw) inquired, where does the money go, if no prize is given? (Each winner receives ten thousand dollars.) Beatrice.com creator Ron Hogan (@RonHogan) bemoaned the perceived necessity of such a prize altogether, writing, "But, but, if we don't have a Pulitzer-winning novel, nobody will get the sales boost, and publishing will be DOOOOOMED! #waaah." Public relations maven Kimberly Burns (@kimberlyburnspr) offered a similar sentiment: "No #Pulitzer for fiction means go to an independent bookstore & ask a bookseller for a recommendation."

But amid the chatter over the Pulitzer in fiction, plenty of attention was sent the way of poetry prize recipient Tracy K. Smith, whose win for Life on Mars (Graywolf Press) came on, of all days, her birthday. The finalists in poetry, also published by small presses, were Forrest Gander for Core Samples From the World (New Directions) and Ron Padgett for How Long (Coffee House Press).

Stephen Greenblatt took the prize in general nonfiction for his National Book Award-winning The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (Norton). The finalists were Diane Ackerman for One Hundred Names For Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing (Norton) and Mara Hvistendahl for Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men (Public Affairs).

The Pulitzer Prizes are given annually for books published in the previous year by American authors.

In the video below, Smith discusses Life on Mars, including what Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey have to do with her winning collection.

The shortlist for the 2012 IMPAC Dublin literary prize was revealed today, highlighting ten authors with notable novels released in English in 2010. Among the finalists for the international honor, which annually awards one hundred thousand euros, are three Americans, Jennifer Egan, Karl Marlantes, and Willy Vlautin.

Egan is named a finalist for A Visit From the Goon Squad, which took both the National Book Critics Circle and the Pulitzer Prize last year. Marlantes makes the shortlist with his much-lauded debut, Matterhorn (Atlantic Monthly Press/El León Literary Arts) which won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize in 2010. Vlautin joins the ranks with his third novel, Lean on Pete (Harper Perennial).

Among the international novels up for the award are Rocks in the Belly, the debut of British author Jon Bauer; The Matter With Morris by Canadian David Bergen; The Memory of Love by British and Sierra Leonean author Aminatta Forna; Even the Dogs by British author Jon McGregor; and Landed by British author Tim Pears. Two translations also made the list, Limassol by Yishai Sarid, translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav, and The Eternal Son by Cristovão Tezza, translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin.

The finalists were culled from a longlist of 147 titles nominated by libraries in twelve countries. The winner of this year's prize will be announced on June 13.

In the video below, Vlautin discusses the obsession behind his shortlisted novel—and sings a song about it.

In partnership with the family of a Vietnam veteran known for his antiwar writing and activism, Iowa Review has launched a multigenre writing contest open to U.S. military veterans and active duty personnel. The Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award competition, which offers one thousand dollars and publication in Iowa Review, is accepting entries of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on any subject.

Pulitzer Prize winner and Vietnam veteran Robert Olen Butler will select the winning work from a pool chosen by the journal's editors (all finalists will be considered for publication). Butler, much of whose work is informed by his experiences in the U.S. military, served in Vietnam as an intelligence agent and a translator. He is the author of twelve novels, most recently A Small Hotel (Grove Press, 2011), six short story collections, and a nonfiction book on craft, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction (Grove Press, 2005).

Writers may submit their work with a fifteen-dollar entry fee via Submittable or postal mail (an extra ten dollars gets entrants a yearlong subscription to the magazine). The deadline is June 15. Visit the Iowa Review website for complete guidelines.

In the video below, Butler discusses how his time in the military led the former playwright to fiction, and how his experiences in Vietnam have shaped his work.

In collaboration with Miami Dade College, the thirty-four-year-old National Poetry Series has established a new book award to accompany its five annual prizes, for a collection of Spanish-language verse.

The winner of the inaugural Paz Prize for Poetry will receive five hundred dollars, and Akashic Books will publish the winning book in a bilingual edition.

The competition, open to American poets writing in Spanish, will begin accepting manuscript entries on May 1 and will close on June 15. Finalists will be announced in July, and a winner, selected by Puerto Rican American poet Victor Hernández Cruz, will be named in September.

"In our increasingly diverse nation, poetry in translation is not just desired, but necessary," says Alina Interian, executive director of Miami Dade College's literary hub, the Center, in a press release. "It allows for shared experience across cultures and greater understanding, and for even more beauty in our world."

Complete guidelines for the Paz Prize are available on the National Poetry Series website.