Writers Hold Vigil in D.C., Sensitivity Readers, and More
Arundhati Roy’s impact on Indian literature; the state of journalism in the digital age; a history of the Paris Review; and other news.
Genre: Fiction
Body Snatchers: The Bloody Work of Love, Redemption, and the Writer
A poet and novelist investigates the “bloody” work of rummaging for parts of real-life people in order to create stronger characters in fiction.
Alaa Al Aswany
Caption:
“At some point I feel that the characters do exist...they become independent.” In this video from Louisiana Channel, Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany speaks about how the characters in his novel The Yacoubian Building (American University in Cairo Press, 2004), translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies, began to take on a life of their own as he wrote them.
Genre:
Big Little Lies
Caption:
Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel Big Little Lies (Penguin Books, 2014) has been adapted into a television miniseries, created by David E. Kelley and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. The dark comedy tells the story of a murder involving three mothers of young children, and stars Nicole Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, Alexander Skarsgård, Reese Witherspoon, and Shailene Woodley.
Genre:
Azar Nafisi’s AWP Keynote, Anticipated Poetry of 2017, and More
Javier Marias on fiction and politics; the social-media team behind the Merriam-Webster dictionary; the resurgence of aphorisms; and other news.
Sondheim Receives PEN Literary Service Award, Artistic Paralysis, and More
How many exclamation points to use in fiction; Swansea University announces the longlist for the 2017 International Dylan Thomas Prize; fiction writer William Melvin Kelley has died; and other news.
PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants Announced
PEN America has announced the recipients of the annual PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants. This year the judges awarded fifteen grants of $3,870 each to assist in the completion of translation projects spanning thirteen different languages. PEN also announced the winner of the inaugural $5,000 Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature.
The 2017 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant recipients are:
Nick Admussen for his translation from the Chinese of Ya Shi’s poetry collection Floral Mutter
Polly Barton for her translation from the Japanese of Misumi Kubo’s novel Cowards Who Looked to the Sky
Elizabeth Bryer for her translation from the Spanish of Aleksandra Lun’s novel The Palimpsests
Vitaly Chernetsky for his translation from the Ukrainian of Sophia Andrukhovych’s novel Felix Austria
Iain Galbraith for his translation from the German of Raoul Schrott’s Selected Poems
Michelle Gil-Montero for her translation from the Spanish of Valerie Mejer Caso’s poetry collection Edinburgh Notebook
Sophie Hughes for her translation from the Spanish of Alia Trabucco Zerán’s debut novel, The Remainder
Elisabeth Jaquette for her translation from the Arabic of Rania Mamoun’s story collection Thirteen Months of Sunrise
Kira Josefsson for her translation from the Swedish of Pooneh Rohi’s novel The Arab
Adam Morris for his translation from the Portuguese of Beatriz’s Bracher novel I Didn’t Talk
Kaitlin Rees for her translation from the Vietnamese of Nhã Thuyên’s poetry collection A Parade
Dayla Rogers for her translation from the Turkish of Kemal Varol’s novel Wûf
Christopher Tamigi for his translation from the Italian of Mauro Covacich’s novel In Your Name
Manjushree Thapa for her translation from the Nepali of Indra Bahadur Rai’s novel There’s a Carnival Today
Joyce Zonana for her translation from the French of Tobie Nathan’s novel This Land That Is Like You
The recipient of the inaugural $5,000 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature is Douglas Grant Heise, for his translation of Luigi Malerba’s novel, Ithaca Forever.
PEN’s prize advisory board selected the fifteen grantees from a pool of 224 applicants. For more information about the winners and the Translation Fund, which is now in its fourteenth year, visit PEN’s website.
Salman Rushdie’s Next Novel, Immigrant Poets, and More
The reading styles of slam poets versus page poets; tips and strategies for surviving AWP; John Rechy on mystery in fiction; and other news.
Gone to the Forest
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“The idea was to use a kind of fragmented approach to talking about colonialism...because I think that’s increasingly the way we think about and access historical narratives.” In this video, Katie Kitamura talks about the structural choices behind her second novel, Gone to the Forest (Free Press, 2012). Kitamura’s most recent novel, A Separation (Riverhead Books, 2017), tells the story of the end of a marriage and a husband gone missing in Greece.
Genre:
On the Road
Last month, hundreds of thousands of red Skittles were found on a highway road in Wisconsin, having spilled from a truck transporting the candy for integration into cattle feed. Write a short story that starts with a similarly striking image of something highly unusual found on a road. As the story progresses, continue escalating the mystery and oddity of the situation. Does the story end with a satisfactory resolution, or does it leave the reader with lingering questions?
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