Jump to navigation Skip to content
The documentary Behind Those Books, written by Kaven Brown, directed by Mills Miller, and featuring interviews with Terry McMillan, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Kevin Powell, is billed as "the first and only comprehensive documentation, on film, of the urban literature genre, giving viewers a raw and uncut look inside the emerging industry." It will premiere May 28 at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City.
Last night the National Book Critics Circle celebrated its favorite books of 2010, announcing National Book Critics Circle Award winners in poetry, fiction, and autobiography. C. D. Wright took home the prize in poetry for One With Others (Copper Canyon), a work of verse journalism investigating the Civil Rights movement in the poet's native Arkansas.
"She’s developed a new form, if not a new genre," says NBCC board member Craig Morgan Teicher in a review of Wright's book, "that allows for a new blending of fact and feeling, one which could help us tell our stories going forward, if only we’ll let it school us."
In fiction, Jennifer Egan won in fiction for A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf). Board member Collette Bancroft says of Egan's time-leaping novel-in-stories, "A Visit From the Goon Squad wraps big themes—art and its relationship with technology, the fluid nature of the self, love and its loss—in stories with a satiric edge, believable but never predictable characters, and a range of styles masterfully rendered."
In autobiography, Darin Strauss won for Half a Life (McSweeney's Books), a memoir of the author's life after a devastating accident involving one of his high school classmates. "What might have been exploitative instead feels important, and dearly won," says board member Karen Long.
In the video below, filmed last week, Wright reads from her winning volume at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.
Each year the University of Oregon Libraries hosts an Edible Book Festival featuring examples of edible artwork that "must be made from consumable components and reflect the concept of 'the book' through the use of text, form, or literary inspiration." The next Edible Book Festival will be held on March 31. Check out similar events at Duke, Xavier, the University of Puget Sound, and other schools across the country.
Lloyd Cole, the former lead singer of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, recently released the music video for his song "Writers Retreat!" from last year's solo album "Broken Record." Listen as Cole croons the following lyrics: "Who did you meet at the writers retreat? / Where did you sleep at the writers retreat? / What did you write at the writers retreat?"
We asked Ryan Fischer-Harbage of The Fischer-Harbage Agency, Inc., whose client list includes Ethan Brown, Courtney Eldridge, Bill Eppridge, Aliya King, Amy Sullivan, and Jackson Taylor, to fill us in on his book proposal writing class at Mediabistro.com.
Do most of your Mediabistro students have a book they’ve started when they sign up for your class?
Most people have an idea, and in addition to the workshop, I also teach an advanced class where people can only sign up if they have a rough idea of a book, or several ideas. I think these classes are most effective for people who are already into something.
Have most of your students received their MFA?
The thing I like about Mediabistro is that they attract working writers so it’s a wide mix of people. Right now I have a class of ten. Three of them have their MFAs and some of them are professionals in other things—there’s even a trainer, and then the others are journalists.
What does a book proposal look like?
So here’s the deal. When you’re selling a nonfiction book you don’t have to write the whole book. You only have to write a proposal. A TV writer writes a spec script, a musician puts together a demo tape, and whether you’re writing a memoir or a health and wellness title or narrative nonfiction, you write a book proposal. Generally speaking, a proposal is forty-five to seventy-five pages.
What is the standard template for a book proposal?
There are five or six components, perhaps the most important of which is the sample material from the book. In eight weeks, if my students do their homework, which probably 75 percent of the time they do, people have a working first draft of their proposal by the end of the course.
What is the success rate for your students getting their book sold?
It’s my experience that in every workshop, whether it’s a regular nonfiction book proposal workshop or an advanced workshop, at least one student from every group sells their book within ninety days of the class. And there are more that come later, but I usually hear about the ones right after the class.
I’m guessing that because you’re an agent you know what other agents are looking for?
I don’t necessarily tell people where to pitch their proposals. I’m more concerned with the actual craft than with the business side of things.
What are your top five tips when pitching a book proposal?
One: The big publishers won’t consider a proposal unless it’s from an agent. Obviously some of the small presses and university presses don’t care, but I always advise people to start at the top. You know, if you have the choice of Random House paying you real money for your book and getting copies in every store in the country, or a university press paying you nothing and getting your book on Amazon and a couple local bookstores, I think, Why not start at the top? Writers should be paid.
Two: Writers need to know to whom they’re pitching, which means having a real familiarity with what an agent does. Writers send agents a query letter, which is a one-page summary of their book, and it also includes a brief bio of the writer. I think this letter should be sent to agents that the writer’s research suggests would be interested in their book. For example, when I get a query letter that says, “Dear Agent,” and I see that fifty or seventy-five of my colleagues are cc’d on the e-mail, I just delete it. I don’t even read it. The writer put no time into sending it to me, and I feel no obligation into putting time into reading it. When someone sends me a letter that shows the writer is familiar with my work, I can’t just delete it because I feel and see that they’ve put a little bit of time into sending it to me, and I owe them time to read it.
Three: People often send their query letters out before their proposal is finished, and if I write back and say, “Great, I’d love to read it,” and I get a response like, “Oh, well, it’s going to be ready in six months, and I’ll send it to you,” I feel annoyed. I could get hit by a bus in the next six months. I think it’s much more professional to have the proposal finished and when someone says they’d like to read it—boom, you send it.
Four: The mistake I see most frequently is people don’t put enough time into their work. They rush things and they don’t engage in a meaningful editorial process of careful revision. Agents are a little more forgiving than editors. Agents will look at something more than once. We’re used to seeing things that are less developed, and a good agent will help develop a writer a bit, but the work has got to be done. We don’t talk about competition in this business, but it’s extremely competitive.
Five: Work finds its place. The market forces work pretty well—not perfectly, and certainly a lot of great work goes undiscovered, but when someone really focuses on his or her craft and does the footwork, whatever’s supposed to happen generally does.
Fischer-Harbage accepts queries via e-mail: ryan@fischerharbage.com. Based on a high volume of submissions, his only request is patience.
Prolific author and Princeton professor Joyce Carol Oates recently appeared on the PBS NewsHour to speak with Jeffrey Brown about her new memoir, The Widow's Story (Ecco), in which she writes about her experience following the death of her husband three years ago. In this clip she discusses what she calls widowhood's "world of absurdity."
In July Random House will publish poet Sandra Beasley's memoir, Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From an Allergic Life, which describes her experience growing up and coming to terms with a potentially deadly disorder—severe food allergies.
Last week Maxine Hong Kingston, whose memoir, I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, was published in January by Knopf, and Leslie Marmon Silko, author of the memoir The Turquoise Ledge (Viking, 2010), read together at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City.
You may want to turn up the volume because this unique clip, the book trailer for Elisabeth Tova Bailey's memoir, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (Algonquin Books, 2010), delivers exactly what the title promises. The memoir, which was named one of the best books of 2010 by the Huffington Post, follow's the author's observations of a forest snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand during a long illness.
As the new year rages on with news of political unrest abroad, PenTales, a New York City–based organization dedicated to furthering global dialogue through stories, has announced a short story contest on the theme of "revolt." The competition welcomes entries from around the globe (written in or translated into English) that offer unique perspective on the topic.
According to the contest guidelines listed on the PenTales Web site, judge Daniel Rasmussen, author of American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt (Harper, 2011), will be looking for "stories that capture the bravery and idealism of men and women who fight against oppression and injustice; stories that disinter the wild spirit of man in rebellion; stories that remind us of the wild dreams and tremendous risks of complete and total revolt."
The winning work, as well as the second- and third-place selections, will be published on the PenTales Web site along with a review by Rasmussen. The winner will also receive a signed copy of American Uprising.
The deadline for entries, which should be submitted via e-mail, is March 7.
For those seeking inspiration from a book on the subject, this recent post on the New Yorker's Book Bench blog recommends a few illuminating titles, including Gabriel García Márquez's 1975 novel, The Autumn of the Patriarch.
![LLOYD COLE - Writers Retreat! [OFFICIAL]](https://www.pw.org/files/styles/video_thumb_medium/public/media-oembed/i.ytimg.com/vi/yyWPpToywbg/hqdefault.jpg?itok=gKEEPplB)
