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At the Wheeler Centre, Hanya Yanagihara speaks about how her novel A Little Life (Doubleday, 2015) is “willfully out of step” with contemporary literature. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and National Book Award in 2015, the novel has been optioned by producer Scott Rudin as a limited series.
“The dog kept at it, each bark, one right after the other, loud as gunshot, its face a box of jowl and jaw more massive than bloodhound.” At Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, ZZ Packer reads from and discusses her novel-in-progress, The Thousands, which chronicles the lives of black, white, and Native American families shortly after the Civil War, through Reconstruction and the Indian Campaigns in the Southwest.
Teju Cole reads from his novel Open City (Random House, 2012) while accepting the 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction. Cole speaks about his collection of essays, Known and Strange Things (Random House, 2016), in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk Books, 2011), the debut young adult novel by Ransom Riggs, blends fantasy, mystery, and thriller—and is interspersed with illustrative vintage photographs. Packed with these enchanting elements, the film adaptation, directed by Tim Burton, stars Asa Butterfield, Eva Green, Samuel L. Jackson, and Ella Purnell.
“Halfway between you and me is a long ways away, but there is a small town where we will not be seen, where we will hide in plain sight, where we will be strangers until we are not.” In this video from 2015, the Loft Literary Center and BUST Magazine presents Roxane Gay, who reads tweets and from her short story, “Do You Have a Place for Me?”
The National Book Foundation has announced its 2016 5 Under 35 honorees. The annual awards are given to five writers under the age of 35 who have published their first novel or story collection in the past five years. Each honoree is selected by a writer who was either a finalist for the National Book Award or a previous honoree of the 5 Under 35 program.
The 2016 recipients, who each receive $1,000, are:
Brit Bennett, author of The Mothers (Riverhead, 2016), selected by Jacqueline Woodson.
Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing (Knopf, 2016), selected by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), selected by Lauren Groff.
S. Li, author of Transoceanic Lights (Harvard Square Editions, 2015), selected by Karen Bender.
Thomas Pierce, author of Hall of Small Mammals (Riverhead, 2016), selected by Amity Gaige.
“We are proud to add the current 5 Under 35 honorees to the National Book Foundation’s roster of remarkable writers,” said David Steinberger, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation. “There is no doubt that all 5 Under 35 honorees have expanded and will continue to expand the literary landscape by producing work that engages the world at large.”
Established in 2006, the 5 Under 35 program has honored more than fifty emerging writers including Angela Flournoy, Phil Klay, Valeria Luiselli, Justin Torres, and Kirstin Valdez Quade. The 2016 honorees will be celebrated at a ceremony in New York City on November 14.
Photos (clockwise from top left): Brit Bennett, Yaa Gyasi, Greg Jackson, Thomas Pierce, S. Li
“In this book of mine, Brave New World, I postulated a substance called ‘soma’...I think it’s quite on the cards that we may have drugs which will profoundly change our mental states without doing us any harm.” In this Blank on Blank animated video of a 1958 interview with journalist Mike Wallace, Aldous Huxley speaks about his 1932 novel and his predictions for the future of political leadership, propaganda, and technology.
This week, write a scene in which the main character is watching the presidential debates on television with another character and a confrontation arises over a disagreement of opinions. Have these characters just met, or are they old friends? Do their differing politics come as a surprise to the reader, or to each other, or are they expected? Politics aside, what does the disagreement reveal about the characters’ respective personalities, emotional states, and motives in relation to the narrative? Consider incorporating this scene for a short story you’ve written in the past or are currently working on in order to deepen a relationship.
“A sentence just came out of nowhere and it said: ‘So here I am, upside down in a woman.’” In a conversation with Christopher Beha at the 92nd Street Y, Ian McEwan discusses the origins of his new novel, Nutshell (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2016), which is narrated by a fetus.
In this film adaptation of Rosalie Ham's debut gothic novel, The Dressmaker (Penguin Books, 2015), Kate Winslet stars as Tilly Dunnage, who returns to a small Australian town to take care of her ailing mother.
![Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children | Official Trailer 2 [HD] | 20th Century FOX](https://www.pw.org/files/styles/video_thumb_medium/public/media-oembed/i.ytimg.com/vi/DN1uhnnKscY/hqdefault.jpg?itok=dSl2YcAT)
