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High-Rise, J. G. Ballard's 1975 novel that follows the breakdown in social order among residents of a luxury high-rise building, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Ben Wheatley, the film stars Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, and Sienna Miller.
As personal information and financial transactions become increasingly digitized, more and more reliance is placed on online accounts and password-protected websites, thus the number of accounts any person maintains is growing each year. At the same time, studies report that most people reuse the same five or so passwords, and the most popular ones remain the same, year after year, such as: password, 123456, football, baseball, and qwerty. Write a short story in which your main character finds a list of important passwords. What does the combination of passwords and accounts reveal about the person who created them? Is there a pattern that leads to the discovery of additional information? If there are consequences for your character's unexpected access to someone else's private data, how do they play out in the context of your story?
This clip is taken from the opening sequence of Orson Welles's 1962 film adaptation of Franz Kafka's 1925 novel, The Trial. The scene, narrated by Welles and animated by Alexandre Alexeieff, depicts the book's opening parable, "Before the Law."
The first-ever virtual-reality reading; the political necessity of apocalyptic fiction in the Middle East; sad birthday poems; and other news.
A Shakespeare-inspired card game; Macmillan has acquired Pronoun; internal legibility in poems; and other news
"The promise and the danger of a short story is that it can be perfect." At the 2013 New Yorker Festival, Junot Díaz and Karen Russell speak about the unique challenges of writing short stories.
"When I was little, I would always be inspired by books that my mom gave me and I always wanted to be a writer. And that dream has come true, at a really young age!" Students, volunteers, and cofounders Nínive Calegari and Dave Eggers of 826 Valencia talk about the opening of a second branch in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco. The center will offer free creative writing and tutoring programs for young writers.
As the month of May winds down, the deadlines for several book contests in poetry and fiction are quickly approaching. Each prize compiled below offers at least $1,000 and publication of the winning manuscript.
For fiction writers, the BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize and the University of Georgia Press Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award both offer a prize of $1,000 and publication for a short story collection. Peter Conners will judge the BOA Short Fiction Prize, while Lee K. Abbott will judge the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award. The deadline for both contests is May 31.
Meanwhile, the Elixir Press Fiction Award offers $2,000 and publication for a short story collection or novel. The press’s editors will judge; the deadline is May 31. The annual Gival Press Novel Award offers publication and $3,000 for a novel; the judge is anonymous and the deadline is May 30.
On the poetry side, three contests—the Anhinga Press Anhinga–Robert Dana Prize for Poetry, the Backwaters Press Backwaters Prize, and the Oberlin College Press FIELD Poetry Prize—each offer publication of a full-length poetry manuscript. Evie Shockley will judge the $2,000 Anhinga–Robert Dana Prize for Poetry; the deadline is May 30. Henri Cole will judge the $2,000 Backwaters Prize, and the editors of Oberlin College Press will judge the $1,000 FIELD Poetry Prize; the deadline for both contests is May 31.
For a look at more writing contests with upcoming deadlines, visit our Grants & Awards database and submission calendar. Full submission details, including eligibility guidelines, manuscript length requirements, and entry fees, are available on the contest websites.
If you’re having trouble starting a scene, try taking it out of the story and writing it as a screenplay. Made up of only the most essential pieces of expression, action, and dialogue, a screenplay can act as a kind of blueprint for a scene, helping you to make sense of the complexity and movement while forcing you to cut away whatever isn’t necessary. Once you understand the scene at its core, try plugging it back into the story, adapting it to the style of the prose, and giving it more body, like clay onto an armature. You can also try this on a scene or story you admire, adapting it into a screenplay to get a sense of how the author crafted such a powerfully dramatic moment.
"What is it you think you did?" Watch the trailer for the film adaptation of Indignation (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), one of Philip Roth's last books before his retirement as a novelist. The film is directed by James Schamus who also wrote the screenplay.
