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Hal Hartley, the filmmaker who brought us such indie classics as Trust (1990), Amateur (1994), and Henry Fool (1997), directed this short video featuring Amanda Stern in conversation with Paul LaFarge, author of Luminous Airplanes, which is both a novel (forthcoming from FSG in October) and a large online fiction, or immersive text.
Steve Almond has a little fun with Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and others at Fox News in this trailer for his story collection God Bless America, forthcoming from Lookout Books in October.
The sixth annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize, recognizing "the power of the written word to promote peace," was awarded yesterday to novelist Chang-Rae Lee and journalist-cum-memoirist Wilbert Rideau. Lee received the ten-thousand-dollar award for his fourth novel, The Surrendered (Riverhead Books), and Rideau won for his memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (Knopf).
Lee's novel unfolds during the Korean War, examining the repercussions of violence in the decades that follow the event. "This is a big novel which steadily transcends any thematic constraints and steps into real art," says fiction judge Ron Carlson, adding, "the dimensions of the book insist on a gritty and complex understanding of our best impulses in the worst of times."
Nonfiction judge Eric Bates says of Rideau's book, completed after the author spent forty-four years incarcerated in Louisiana prisons, "For his reporting alone, Rideau has made a critical and lasting contribution to our understanding of a prison system that long ago gave up on the notion of rehabilitation. But his memoir goes far beyond the limitations of journalism. He brings to his story a deep devotion to the power of literature, drawing on traditions as diverse as Saint Augustine and Frederick Douglass to craft a dramatic and moving tale that is both deeply felt and richly observed."
The winners will be presented their awards at a ceremony on November 13 in Dayton, Ohio, the seat of the historic Dayton Peace Accords, initialed there in November 1995.
In the video below, Lee discusses his winning book with Leonard Lopate of New York City public radio station WNYC.
Director Simon Ennis's film Up in Cottage Country, an official selection of this year's Toronto International Film Festival, tells the tale of a man who finds himself in an alternate universe that turns out to be the basis of the story his wife is reading: Franz Kafka's "In the Penal Colony."
Read Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Lottery” and Wells Towers’s story “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.” Both stories integrate the ancient and the contemporary in surprising and disturbing ways. (For another example read Matthew Sharpe’s novel Jamestown [Soft Skull Press, 2007]). Draft a story that does the same thing, blending the past and the present into the fictional elements of plot, setting, dialogue, and character.
"I think the funnest part of running a bookstore is treasure hunting...going through those boxes and coming up with hidden treasures," says Jeffrey Frase, owner of Cameron's Books, the second-oldest used-book store in Portland, Oregon. "It's just like being a kid again." Directors Jin Ryu and Yi-Fan Lu spent two months getting to know Frase before asking if they could film this five-minute documentary.
Much of Andrea Arnold's adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights was shot on a handheld camera. The movie, starring Kaya Scodelario and James Howson as Cathy and Heathcliff, will be released in the U.K. on November 11.
In November OR Books will publish Alive Inside the Wreck: A Biography of Nathanael West by Joe Woodward, a frequent contributor to the magazine who wrote "The Art of Reading Nathanael West: Simple Was His Pilgrimage and Brief" for the May/June 2007 issue. This is a clip from John Schlesinger's 1975 film adaptation of West's novel The Day of the Locust, starring Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, William Atherton, Burgess Meredith, and Geraldine Page.
There is someone inside a house at night who is startled by a knock at the door. Outside the door are two people. Complete this scene by considering the following questions: Who is the person inside the house? What is he (or she) doing when he hears the knock? Does he know why the pair are at the door? Who are the pair? What do they want? After completing the opening scene, write the story of what happens next.
The Association of German Publishers and Booksellers Foundation (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels Stiftung) has announced the five finalists for its 2011 German Book Prize. The winning novelist will receive twenty-five thousand euros (approximately thirty-four thousand dollars).
The shortlisted books are Against the World by Jan Brandt, Das Wunderhorn by Michael Buselmeier, The Girl by Angelika Klüssendorf, Blumenberg by Sibylle Lewitscharoff, In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge, and The Hurtress by Marlene Streeruwitz. None of the shortlisted books have yet to be translated in the United States—after all, the art of translation takes time—but given the track record of German Book Prize honorees, perhaps these authors will appear on this side of the Atlantic in the near future.
It may have taken a few years, but 2007 winner Julia Franck saw her winning novel, Die Mittagsfrau (Lady Midday), published in English last year as The Blindness of the Heart (Grove Press). And 2006 winner Katharina Hacker's novel Die Habenichtse was published as The Have-Nots two years after her award by Europa Editions. Just this past April, inaugural 2005 prizewinner Arno Geiger saw his novel Es geht uns gut appear in English as We Are Doing Fine (Ariadne Press).
The 2011 winner will receive the award in mid-October at the Frankfurt Book Fair, where finalists will also receive prizes. The five remaining authors will take home twenty-five hundred euros (roughly thirty-four hundred dollars) each.
