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The longlist of finalists for the first Dylan Thomas Prize, to be awarded biennially for a book of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction by a writer under thirty, was recently announced in the late poet's hometown of Swansea, England.
Borders Group, Inc., the company that operates the Borders and Waldenbooks chains of bookstores, recently named George Jones as its new CEO. Jones, the former head of the Saks Department Store Group, succeeds Greg Josefowicz, who announced his retirement in January.
Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, recently vetoed a bill to designate “I Love My Louisiana” as the state poem. The twenty-three-line poem was written by seventy-two-year-old Prairieville resident James Ellis Richardson.
South African fiction writer Mary Watson was recently named the winner of the 2006 Caine Prize for her short story "Jungfrau.” She received £10,000 (approximately $18,200).
Jim Guigli, a retired mechanical designer who lives in Carmichael, California, recently won the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest—a distinction that many writers would just as soon avoid. The award, sponsored by the English department at San Jose State University, is given annually for the worst opening sentence of a novel.
The social networking Web site Gather.com recently launched a contest that offers creative writers a chance to sell their submissions through Amazon Shorts, a program developed by Amazon.com that sells short stories and essays in a digital format for forty-nine cents each.
In addition to the standard venues for literary readings—bookstores, bars, libraries, and coffee shops—casinos are becoming attractive locations for authors who want to take a gamble on scheduling nontraditional appearances while on book tours.
Novelist and memoirist A. M. Homes investigates how an author's Web site should look and function.
Whether you create it yourself or hire a designer, developing an author Web site is one of the best ways to promote yourself and provide an authoritative source for readers to discover your work.
For the second installment of this occassional feature, in which we ask authors to list the movies,
music, artwork, and books that inspired them during the course of
writing their new books, we asked two-time Booker
Prize–winning author Peter Carey, whose ninth novel was published by
Knopf in May, for his list; he replied with this essay.
