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“I wanted very much to write an accurate historical novel because I was so troubled about how hate can operate in our hearts.” Min Jin Lee introduces herself and talks about the impetus for her second novel, Pachinko (Grand Central Publishing, 2017), a story that follows four generations of a Korean immigrant family in twentieth-century Japan.
Lisa Ko on writing and rewriting her debut novel; Tor Books launches experimental genre imprint; poet Jack Muller has died; and other news.
What kind of secret should be taken to the grave? How might a secret act as proof of intimacy? For the debut of Sophie Calle’s most recent art installation, the artist spent two afternoons receiving and transcribing visitors’ secrets, and then depositing them into a monumental obelisk installed in Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery. In Calle’s instructive text about the project, she writes of one previously divulged secret, “At the very moment he was depriving me of his love, this man offered me, through his confession, the ultimate proof of our intimacy.” Write a short story in which you imagine the ending to that story. What is the secret that this man confesses to Calle as they are breaking up? Why does he share it with her in their last moments together?
Writer and editor Jean Stein has died; more than 41 percent of U.K. readers lie about what they’ve read; Elizabeth Strout on embracing childhood feelings; and other news.
Fiction writer T. Geronimo Johnson has won the Simpson Family Literary Project’s inaugural literary prize. He will receive $50,000 and a brief residency at the Lafayette Library and the University of California in Berkeley. He will also make a number of public appearances and give a public reading in the San Francisco Bay Area. The annual award is given to a midcareer fiction writer to encourage and support forthcoming work.
Johnson, whose 2015 novel, Welcome to Braggsville, was longlisted for the National Book Award, plans to use the $50,000 prize to support his forthcoming novel,which the author says “explores the convergence of Afro-futurism; global AI; the economic imperatives that amplify cultural differences; corporate religion (in all manifestations); and tech inequity. The question behind this novel is the same question that animates my previous work: How do we learn to care about people who are not like us? I’m thrilled by the opportunity to complete this journey without interruption.”The Simpson Family Literary Prize is cosponsored by the Lafayette Library & Learning Center Foundation in Lafayette, California, and the English Department at the University of California in Berkeley. An anonymous jury selects the winner; there is no application process.
Joe Di Prisco, the Literary Project’s founder and prize chair, established the foundation in 2012 with a mission to foster and build creative writing communities in the Bay Area through collaboration between libraries and university-affiliated creative writing programs. In addition to the literary prize, the Simpson Family Literary Project sponsors community outreach programs, including creative writing classes for high school students and incarcerated youth in diverse communities in California, as well as an annual writer-in-residence program at the Lafayette Library & Learning Center.
Di Prisco says he is excited about the continued growth of the project and selecting Johnson as the winner of its inaugural prize: “The Simpson Family Literary Project is thrilled to share Johnson and his brilliant work with students, readers, writers, teachers, professors, and librarians across generations.”
(Photo: T. Geronimo Johnson; Credit: Sandra Dyas)
Poetry and prose books by Latinx authors to read for a hundred days and beyond; U.K. readers turn back to the print book while Chinese readers embrace the e-book; Almog Behar on bridging the gap between Arabic and Hebrew writers; and other news.
The Circle (Knopf/McSweeney’s Books, 2013), Dave Eggers’s dystopian novel about a young woman who rises through the ranks of a powerful tech and social media company, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by James Ponsoldt, the film stars John Boyega, Tom Hanks, and Emma Watson.
PEN America releases report on the state of free speech in the first hundred days of Donald
Trump’s presidency; Mohsin Hamid on writing fiction and migration; the New Yorker profiles poet Morgan Parker; and other news.
“Books tend to get short shrift in the cultural world,” says Lisa Lucas, executive director of the National Book Foundation, in this interview with James Brown. Lucas speaks about the foundation’s goal to promote a love of writing and the BookUp program, which connects young people with published authors and provides free copies of books.
Barnes & Noble names Demos Parneros as its new CEO; Michelle Dean on Granta’s “Best American Young Novelists” and the conflicting impulses of American fiction writers; Major Jackson’s “Renga for Obama” to conclude this Sunday; and other news.
