Jump to navigation Skip to content
Think back to your childhood, to the stories you remember being told. Was there a particular story you wanted to hear over and over again? This week, try and remember that story, and choose one of the characters from it. Take that character and write an entirely different story centered around new obstacles. For example, if you choose Pippi Longstocking, write a story in which she is raising her own family, or has become the captain of her father's ship after his retirement.
American writers Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler have made the shortlist for the 2014 Man Booker Prize, announced today by the Booker Prize Foundation. This year the prize was open for the first time to writers of any nationality whose fiction books were written in English and published in the previous year in the U.K. The winner, who will receive £50,000 (approximately $80,000), will be announced in London on October 14.
The finalists are: American writers Joshua Ferris for To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (Viking) and Karen Joy Fowler for We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Serpent’s Tail); Australian writer Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Chatto & Windus); and British authors Howard Jacobson for J (Jonathan Cape), Neel Mukherjee for The Lives of Others (Chatto & Windus), and Ali Smith for How to Be Both (Hamish Hamilton). The six finalists were selected from a longlist of thirteen announced in July.
“As the Man Booker Prize expands its borders, these six exceptional books take the reader on journeys around the world, between the U.K., New York, Thailand, Italy, Calcutta and times past, present and future,” said A. C. Grayling, chair of the judges. “It is a strong thought-provoking shortlist which we believe demonstrates the wonderful depth and range of contemporary fiction in English.” Along with Grayling, the 2014 judges are Jonathan Bate, Sarah Churchwell, Daniel Glaser, Alastair Niven, and Erica Wagner.
Established in 1969, the Man Booker Prize was originally awarded to a writer who was a citizen of the U.K., the British Commonwealth, Zimbabwe, or the Republic of Ireland. Jonathan Taylor, chair of the foundation, announced the prize’s expansion last September. Recent winners include Eleanor Catton, Hilary Mantel, Julian Barnes, and Howard Jacobson.
Upper left: Joshua Ferris, photo by Laurent Denimal; Upper right: Karen Joy Fowler, photo by David Levenson
The Rona Jaffe Foundation has announced the recipients of the twentieth Rona Jaffe Awards, given annually to six emerging women writers. The foundation offers awards of $30,000 each to poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers.
The 2014 winners are poets Danielle Jones-Pruett of Salem, Massachusetts, and Solmaz Sharif of Oakland, California; fiction writers Olivia Clare of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and T. L. Khleif of Ann Arbor, Michigan; and nonfiction writers Karen Hays of Minneapolis and Mara Naselli of Grand Rapids, Michigan. They will be honored at a private reception in New York City on September 18, and will give a reading at New York University on September 19.
Novelist Rona Jaffe (1931–2005) established the awards in 1995 to “identify and support women writers of unusual talent and promise in the early stages of their writing careers.” The foundation has awarded nearly $2 million to emerging women writers. Previous recipients include Rachel Aviv, Elif Batuman, Eula Biss, Sarah Braunstein, Lan Samantha Chang, Rivka Galchen, Aryn Kyle, Rebecca Lee, Dana Levin, ZZ Packer, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Tracy K. Smith, Mary Syzbist, and Tiphanie Yanique.
The recipients are nominated by writers, editors, publishers, academics, and other literary professionals, and chosen by a committee of judges selected by the Rona Jaffe Foundation. To learn more about the history and growth of the awards, read the Q&A with Beth McCabe, director of the program, in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Photo: Rona Jaffe
Julia Fierro, founder of the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in Brooklyn, New York, speaks on the desire to portray the new American woman's experience in her debut novel, Cutting Teeth (St. Martin's Press, 2014). Fierro is featured in "The MFA Alternatives: Independent Writing Workshops" by Michael Bourne, in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Marysue Rucci, editor in chief at Simon & Schuster, speaks about her immediate response and connection to the story and characters from We Are Not Ourselves, a forthcoming debut novel from Matthew Thomas. Read more on the backstory of this novel in "A Day in the Life of a Publishing House" by Michael Bourne, in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
As everyone recovers from, and reacts to, the shocking announcement that the popular cartoon character Hello Kitty is not a cat but a human girl, take a moment to think about how leaving certain details ambiguous could enhance or detract from a character’s impact in a story. Do you have any characters that have elements of their backstory, or ambiguous qualities, that are never explained? If you have a character whom you feel is hiding something for whatever reason, write a scene in which this secret is revealed.
Some people, once they find a place they like, really make themselves at home. This week, write a story about a regular at a local bar, restaurant, or coffee shop. Why has this person latched on to this particular place? Does he or she always order the same thing? How do the other patrons feel about this person? Try to have all the action in the story take place inside the establishment.
Submissions are open for the twenty-seventh annual Oregon Book Awards, sponsored by the Portland-based nonprofit Literary Arts. The annual prizes are given for books by Oregon residents published in the previous year. The winners will receive $1,000 each and will be announced at an awards ceremony in Portland in April.
Awards are given in the following categories: poetry, short fiction, the novel, creative nonfiction, general nonfiction, children’s literature, young adult literature, drama, and readers’ choice. Submit two copies of a book published between August 1, 2013, and July 31, 2014, with the required entry form and $40 entry fee by August 29. Submissions should be mailed to Literary Arts, 925 SW Washington, Portland, OR 97205. Writers who are Oregon residents and who live in Oregon for at least six months of the year are eligible. Self-published books are eligible. The judges for each category will be announced when the finalists are announced in January; all judges are from out of state.
The 2014 winners include poet Mary Szybist for her collection Incarnadine (Graywolf), chosen by Kwame Dawes; fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin for her story collection The Unreal and the Real (Small Beer Press), chosen by Alan Cheuse; nonfiction writer Jay Ponteri for his memoir Wedlocked (Hawthorne Books), chosen by Ander Monson; and fiction writer Amanda Coplin for her novel The Orchardist (Harper Perennial), chosen by readers.
Literary Arts has administered the Oregon Book Awards for twenty-seven years. The organization also offers the Portland Arts & Lectures series, Oregon Fellowships, Writers in the Schools program, and Delve Readers Seminars.
Photo: Ursula K. Le Guin, the 2014 fiction winner. Credit: Motoya Nakamura
