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This trailer for Helen Phillips's debut "novel in the form of linked fables," And Yet They Were Happy, published this month by Leapfrog Press, is animated by the author's husband, Adam Thompson, and features music by his brother, Nathan. Vanity Fair described Phillips as a "surreal miniaturist," and critic Michael Dirda praised her book as "a gallery of marvels."
Three Percent, the University of Rochester's international literature program, announced late last week the winners of the five-thousand-dollar Best Translated Book Awards in poetry and fiction. Brian Henry's translation of Slovenian poet Aleš Šteger's collection The Book of Things (BOA Editions) won in poetry and Thomas Teal was honored in fiction for his translation from the Swedish of late Finnish author Tove Jansson's novel The True Deceiver (New York Review Books).
Thirty-seven-year-old Šteger is the author of three other volumes of poetry, but The Book of Things is his first to be translated into English. Poetry judge Kevin Prufer said of Šteger, "His objects reflect our own strange complexities—our eagerness to consume, our rationalizations and kindness. Our many cruelties and our grandiosities." Prufer was joined on the jury by Brandon Holmquest, Jennifer Kronovet, Erica Mena, and Idra Novey.
Jansson, perhaps best known for her Moomins, a cast of fantastical characters she created over a half-century through comic strips and children's books, began writing for adults in later life. Among her novels translated into English are The Summer Book and Fair Play, published by New York Review Books. Jansson died in 2001.
The fiction panel, comprised of Monica Carter, Scott Esposito, Susan Harris, Annie Janusch, Matthew Jakubowski, Brandon Kennedy, Bill Marx, Michael Orthofer, and Jeff Waxman said of Jansson's winning book, "Subtle, engaging and disquieting, The True Deceiver is a masterful study in opposition and confrontation."
The awards were announced at New York City's Bowery Poetry Club in conjunction with the PEN World Voices Festival, which closed last Sunday.
To get a sense of Jansson's sources of inspiration, check out the video below, which offers a tour of the author's longtime summer home on an idyllic shoreline near Helsinki.
Take a story you know extremely well, such as how my parents met, my first kiss, or the night I was born and fictionalize it by writing it from a distinct or unlikely point of view. For example, using the story how my parents met, write it from your father's perspective or from the perspective of the bartender at the bar where they met.
This week's fiction prompt comes from Joanna Hershon, author of three novels, including The German Bride (Ballantine, 2008).
The American Fiction Prize sponsored by New Rivers Press has pushed its deadline to June 1.
Fiction writers have an additional month to submit a story of up to 7,500 words to be considered for the one-thousand-dollar prize and inclusion in an anthology, American Fiction: The Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers, to be released in 2012 by the press.
This year's judge is Croatian-born fiction writer and essayist Josip Novakovich, whose most recent book is the story-essay hybrid Three Deaths, published last year by Montreal press Snare Books. His story collections include Yolk and Salvation and Other Disasters, both published in the United States by Graywolf Press.
For complete American Fiction Prize guidelines, visit the New Rivers Press Web site.
Despite a bestelling novel as its source—and a score that was composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood—the film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, directed by Anh Hung Tran, has been met with decidedly mixed reviews that boil down to: The book is better. The movie was released in Japan and Russia last December and in the UK in March.
Will Allison, whose beautifully written debut novel, What You Have Left, was released in 2007, discusses his followup, Long Drive Home, published this month by Free Press.
If somehow you're one of the few who missed Richmond, Virginia, attorney David Kazzie's hilarious Xtranormal animation, "So You Want to Write a Novel," that zinged around the Internet a few months back, then watch it right now, but only if you're sitting somewhere where it's appropriate to laugh out loud. It lampoons the vast, blind ambition of certain novice writers, and tickled agents, editors, writers, as well as would-be writers and readers alike. The video, as they say, went viral, and one of the multitude of people who liked it, was Ann Rittenberg, a Manhattan literary agent who represents Dennis Lehane, and who, with Laura Whitcomb, has written a how-to guide called Your First Novel.
Kazzie noticed Rittenberg had linked to his video, and found it particular exciting as he is a huge Dennis Lehane fan. Kazzie and Rittenberg chatted, and it turned out, Kazzie did indeed have an unpublished manuscript, a thriller. Rittenberg liked his sensibility. David Kazzie now has an agent, and, yes, it's Ann Rittenberg.
Bonus: Ann Rittenberg's "The Successful Writer’s Personality" and an interview with David Kazzie. Also, check out more with Ann Rittenberg in Eryn Loeb's article, "Seek and You Shall Sign" in The Poets & Writers Guide to Literary Agents.
This September Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference will expand its workshop from the historic Bread Loaf Inn in Middlebury, Vermont, to the Italian island of Sicily, with a condensed program of classes in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Ice Cube Press, the nineteen-year-old publisher based in Iowa City with a focus on the importance of place.
