The Page's Wing
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Do the books on your shelves whisper to you, too? Check out this dramatic trailer for The Page's Wing, a short film directed by Federico Campanale, with excellent photography by Ben Geraerts.
Genre: Fiction
Working With Literary Agent Emilie Jacobsen
The most recent episode of the literary podcast Other People with Brad Listi features novelist Emily St. John Mandel, whose new book The Lola Quartet, is just out from Unbridled Books. The entire interview is worth a listen—Emily and Brad discuss a wide range of subjects, including literary life in Brooklyn, Emily's career in dance, and taking language courses in French leading up to a book tour of France. However, around the twenty-five minute mark Mandel recounts her first experience with an agent—which entailed a rejection with generous notes, a massive revision that took six months, and a resubmission before she was taken on as a client. The agent was Emilie Jacobsen, who landed a job at Curtis Brown Literary when she was just out of college in 1946, and worked there until she passed away at the age of eighty-five, in 2010. At the time, Emily St. John Mandel wrote a remembrance of Ms. Jacobsen for the Millions.
Leni Zumas
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This animated short film based on Leni Zumas's first novel, The Listeners, published by Tin House Books this month, features art and animation by Luca Dipierro and music by Father Murphy. Zumas was featured in the magazine's First Fiction Annual back in 2008 for her debut story collection, Farewell Navigator (Open City Books).
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WriterHouse
The mission of WriterHouse is to promote the creation and appreciation of literature and to encourage the development of writers of all levels by providing an affordable, secure workspace and meeting space, high-quality writing instruction, and literary events for the public.
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Writers’ Room of Boston
The Writers’ Room of Boston is a welcoming and supportive community, workspace and virtual presence for writers in all genres. Founded in 1988, the workspace houses 10 working carrels and an office meeting room. It is located in a secure and accessible building in the heart of downtown Boston that is available to members, 24x7 every day and augmented by a vital virtual presence. The Room sponsors fellowships which provide a year of free access to emerging writers, but as a matter of policy no committed writer is turned away for financial need.
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Eight Takes
Pick an overlooked, everyday object—a scarf, a carton of strawberries, a snow globe—and write eight different scenes or vignettes in which that object appears centrally. Have each scene take place in a different location and have the characters interact with the object in various ways.
West Side Books
West Side Books is an independent bookstore located in the historic Highlands neighborhood of northwest Denver. Since 1998, the store has been carrying new, used, rare, and collectible books. West Side Books hosts concerts, readings, and other literary events open to the public for free.
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A Writer's Life
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"I think if people knew how hard we worked, they would pay us more." Enjoy the first tongue-in-cheek episode of A Writer's Life With Susan Juby.
Charles Baxter Wins 2012 Rea Award
The Associated Press reported earlier today that short story writer Charles Baxter has been awarded the 2012 Rea Award for the Short Story, an honor that includes a prize of thirty thousand dollars. Given annually to recognize a writer's body of work, the Rea Award has been given in the past to writers such as Andre Dubus, Grace Paley, Eudora Welty, and Tobias Wolff.
A statement by the prize judges praised Baxter's "original mind and ironic wit" and "acute feeling for the landscape of marriage, childhood, and art." Baxter's most recent story collection is Gryphon (Pantheon Books, 2011). He has also authored several novels and books on craft, including Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction (Graywolf Press, 2008).
In the video below, Baxter discusses what brought him back to the short story after he published five novels, and how "to get a sense of wonder into a short story" in the modern age.
Five Stories From the 2012 Caine Prize Finalists
The finalists for the thirteenth annual Caine Prize for African Literature, the ten-thousand-pound award (approximately sixteen thousand dollars) given for a short story written in English by an African writer, were announced last week. The shortlist of five was selected from 122 story entries by authors from fourteen African countries.
"This prize is more than just another award that will sprinkle fairy dust on a single, lucky writer every year—it is a force for change," says Bernardine Evaristo, this year's chair of judges, in a post on the Caine Prize blog. "I’m looking for stories about Africa that enlarge our concept of the continent beyond the familiar images that dominate the media: War-torn Africa, Starving Africa, Corrupt Africa - in short: The Tragic Continent. I’ve been banging on about this for years because while we are all aware of these negative realities, and some African writers have written great novels along these lines (as was necessary, crucial), isn’t it time now to move on? Or rather, for other kinds of African novels to be internationally celebrated."
Furthering the prize's goal to widen the global audience for new and innovative African fiction, the venues that originally published the shortlisted stories—two U.S. magazines, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and Prick of the Spindle, among them—have released digital editions of the works. Below is the list of this year's finalists, with first lines from each story, and links to the pieces in full (in PDF format).
Rotimi Babatunde of Nigeria for "Bombay’s Republic," published in Mirabilia Review, out of Lagos, Nigeria
"The old jailhouse on the hilltop had remained uninhabited for many decades, through the construction of the town’s first grammar school and the beginning of house-to-house harassment from the affliction called sanitary inspectors, through the laying of the railway tracks by navvies who likewise succeeded in laying pregnancies in the bellies of several lovestruck girls, but fortunes changed for the building with the return of Colour Sergeant Bombay, the veteran who went off with the recruitment officers to Hitler’s War as a man and came back a spotted leopard."
Billy Kahora of Kenya for "Urban Zoning," published in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, out of San Francisco
"Outside on Tom Mboya Street, Kandle realized that he was truly in the Zone."
S. O. Kenani of Malawi for "Love on Trial" from the his debut collection, For Honour and Other Stories (Random House Struik, Cape Town, South Africa)
"Mr Lapani Kachingwe’s popularity has soared."
Melissa Tandiwe Myambo of Zimbabwe for "La Salle de Départ," published in Prick of the Spindle, out of New Orleans
"Like so many omens, she had missed its significance at the time."
Constance Myburgh of South Africa for "Hunter Emmanuel" from Jungle Jim, out of Cape Town, South Africa
"Hunter Emmanuel shouldered his chainsaw and looked up at the trees."
If you're craving a little analysis with your reading, Aaron Bady, a PhD candidate in African literature at University of California, along with some choice friends, will be blogging about the Caine Prize stories for the next few weeks at the New Inquiry. (Thanks to the Millions for this tip.)
The announcement of the winner will take place at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, on July 2. More details about this year's finalists and the past prize winners, who include Helon Habila, E. C. Osondu, and Binyavanga Wainaina, is avaialble on the Caine Prize website.
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