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Vaddey Ratner discusses In the Shadow of Banyan, a debut novel depicting her family's experience during the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s. "I didn't want to write a memoir," she says. "What I wanted was to honor the lives lost, those who perished, and I wanted to do so through my endeavor to transorm personal pain with art." In the Shadow of Banyan will be published by Simon & Schuster in July.
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association has announced the winners of its 2012 book awards, honoring authors from Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, and Washington. Among the winning titles are a semiautobiographical novel by a Bosnian expat, a memoir by an Olympic hopeful swimmer, and a contender for last year's Booker and Giller prizes.
Patrick deWitt, born in Canada and now living in Oregon, won for his second novel, The Sisters Brothers (Ecco), which was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Ismet Prcic, who fled war-torn former Yugoslavia in the nineties and now lives in Portland, Oregon, won for his semiautobiographical debut novel, Shards (Black Cat). Prcic's novel was also shortlisted for a major award last year, the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award.
Washington author Jonathan Evison, whose first novel, All About Lulu (Soft Skull Press, 2008), received the Washington State Book Award, won for his second novel, West of Here (Algonquin Books). Portland-based graphic novelist Craig Thompson, author of Blankets (Top Shelf, 2003) and Goodbye, Chunky Rice (Top Shelf, 1999), won for Habibi (Pantheon Books).
In nonfiction, memoirist and lifelong swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch of Portland was honored for The Chronology of Water, published by Portland indie press Hawthorne Books. Washington State biologist Thor Hanson won for Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle (Basic Books).
The book awards have been given annually since 1984 and judged by representatives from regional booksellers. For the 2012 award, the nine-person jury considered more than two hundred ninety nominated titles.
The video below is a book trailer for Yuknavitch's winning memoir.
From the founders of Ashland Creek Press comes this public service announcement about the writer's most cherished yet endangered object: the typewriter.
This helpful video from AbeBooks demystifies the terms used to describe the physical parts of a book, including boards, hinge and joint, leaf, endpapers, book block, and plates.
Using John Ashbery's poem "And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name" from Houseboat Days as a model, tell a story by telling us how to tell a story. Scaffold the narrative by meditating on the nature of storytelling.
This week's creative nonfiction prompt comes from Vijay Seshadri, director of the nonfiction program at Sarah Lawrence College and author, most recently, of The Disappearances (Harper Collins, 2007).
Immerse yourself in the music, films, art, and other points of inspiration that set off the spark for our twelve debut poets of 2011.
Clamor (UW Bothell literary & art journal)
Essay Press (EP/MFA Book Prize, offers editorial assistantships)
The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut, is looking for works of poetry and prose from collegiate writers whose literary work advances social justice, in the spirit of Stowe's activism through storytelling.
Accepting all types of previously-published writing, from poems to stories to blog posts, the inaugural Student Stowe Prize competition will award twenty-five hundred dollars to a current college or university student.
The winning work will also be republished on the Stowe Center website, and the writer will be recognized at a ceremony on June 7, 2012, alongside a secondary school student whose writing also strives to make "a tangible impact on a social justice issue critical to contemporary society." Eligible works may touch on questions of, for instance, race, class, or gender equality, and must have appeared in a notable periodical or blog.
Student writers may submit entries, which should be accompanied by three references, until February 27. For complete guidelines, visit the Stowe Center website.
Olympia Le-Tan's embroidered clutch-bags spring to life in this amazing stop-motion film directed by Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn and animated by Sylvain Derosne and Léonard Cohen. Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side) has been a featured selection at film festivals around the world, including those in Athens, Paris, Belgium, Montreal, London, South Korea, and Buenos Aires. Watch the complete six-minute film on Vimeo.
In the summer of 2010 David Hanson, Edwin Marty, and Michael Hanson set off on a cross-country trip (in a bus fueled by vegetable oil) to document the American urban farm movement. The story of their adventure is documented in Breaking Through Concrete: Building an Urban Farm Revival, forthcoming from the University of California Press in January.
