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“Sometimes wars start because you forget why you fight.” Marlon James speaks with David Eades from BBC News about his latest novel, based on the 1976 assassination attempt on singer Bob Marley. A Brief History of Seven Killings is featured in Page One in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
The fright-seekers are gearing up to get scared this week, visiting haunted houses, riding haunted hayrides, and stumbling through cavernous corn mazes. Imagine one of your characters is hired to be a monster for one of these frightful events. Why does she take the job? Does she like scaring people, or does she just need the money? What does her costume look like? Does she feel guilty about frightening people?
Award-winning author Brock Clarke reads from his latest novel, The Happiest People in the World (Algonquin Books, 2014), at the 2014 Colgate Writers' Conference. Clarke is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Submissions are currently open for the Madison Review’s Phyllis Smart-Young Prize in Poetry and Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction. The prizes are given annually for a trio of poems and a short story. Each winner will receive $1,000 and publication in the Madison Review.
Using the online submission system, submit either three poems totaling no more than fifteen pages, or a story of up to thirty pages with a $10 entry fee by November 1. The editors of the Madison Review will judge.
Established in the early 1970s, the Madison Review is the undergraduate student–run journal of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The biannual review has published the work of poets Stephen Dunn, Lisel Mueller, and C. K. Williams, and fiction writers Charles Baxter and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
The 2013 poetry prize–winner was Steve Tomasko for his poems “And No Spiders Were Harmed,” “The Plane of the Ecliptic,” and “An Inordinate Fondness.” Phillippe Diederich won the fiction prize for his short story “The Falling.” The winning pieces were published in the Spring 2014 issue of the Madison Review.
Guernica publisher Lisa Lucas moderates a reading and discussion with Mitchell Jackson, author of The Residue Years (Bloomsbury, 2014), and Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division (Agate Bolden, 2013), on the issues of race and class in literature. An interview with Lucas is featured in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Kirkus Reviews has announced the winners of its inaugural Kirkus Prize. Established this year to celebrate the eighty-first anniversary of Kirkus Reviews, the $50,000 prizes will be given annually for a book of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature published in the previous year.
Lily King won the fiction prize for her novel Euphoria (Atlantic Monthly Press). The finalists were Siri Hustvedt for The Blazing World (Simon & Schuster); Dinaw Mengestu for All Our Names (Knopf); Brian Morton for Florence Gordon (Houghton Mifflin); Bill Roorbach for The Remedy of Love (Algonquin Books); and Sarah Waters for The Paying Guests (Riverhead). Kate Christensen, Stephanie Valdez, and Marion Winik judged.
Roz Chast won the nonfiction prize for her graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury). The finalists were Leo Damrosch for Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World (Yale University Press); Elizabeth Kolbert for The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Holt); Armand Marie Leroi for The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science (Viking); Thomas Piketty for Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press); and Bryan Stevenson for Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Spiegel & Grau). Sarah Bagby, Sloane Crosley, and Gregory McNamee judged.
Kate Samworth won the young readers’ literature prize for her picture book Aviary Wonders Inc.: Spring Catalog and Instruction Manual (Clarion). Claudette S. McLinn, Linda Sue Park, and John Edward Peters judged.
The 2015 Kirkus Prize will be awarded to books published between November 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015, and given a Kirkus Star review. For a traditional Kirkus review, authors, agents, or publishers may submit two copies of a book at least four to five months before its publication date. Self-published authors may order a Kirkus Indie review for $425 (for a review in seven to nine weeks) or $575 (for a review in four to six weeks). The editors of Kirkus Reviews estimate their reviewers cover eight to ten thousand books every year and give 10 percent of those books a Kirkus Star. Founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus, Kirkus Reviews is published twice monthly.
Upper Left: Lily King, photo by Winky Lewis. Upper Right: Roz Chast, photo by Bill Franzen.
Elizabeth Huergo reads from her debut novel, The Death of Fidel Pérez (Unbridled Books, 2013), at Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. Read Huergo's piece "Coming Home to Writing: Exile and Literary Citizenship" in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Is there a celebrity that you think one of your characters is destined to meet? Write a scene in which he or she has a chance encounter with this famous person. Have the two carry on a normal conversation before your character recognizes this person is a celebrity. Perhaps this star has some words of wisdom to impart to your character (or the other way around), or maybe he or she is just looking for a friend. For inspiration, watch this video in which recording artist Jay-Z meets a woman named Ellen in a New York City subway car.
Bill Roorbach's latest novel, published by Algonquin Books this month, explores the relationship between two strangers trapped in a cabin during a snowstorm. Algonquin Books is one of eleven small-press publishers featured in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
"As writers, it's very hard to get over the habit of being civilized." The author of Loitering, published this month by Tin House Books, shares a valuable lesson learned from a class with novelist James Salter. Read Kevin Nance's profile of D'Ambrosio in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
