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Microsoft recently announced the creation of MSN Book Search, an online service for digitally searching the text of previously published “books, academic materials, periodicals, and other print resources."
Irish novelist John Banville recently won the 2005 Booker Prize for The Sea (Picador). He received £50,000 (approximately $87,300). The prize, sponsored by the Man Group investment company, is given for the best novel of the year by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland.
The University of Chicago recently acquired valuable archival material from the estate of the late Nobel laureate Saul Bellow.
The Special Collections Library at the University of Rochester recently acquired the archive of BOA Editions, Ltd., a nonprofit press that was founded in 1976 and has published more than 170 books of poetry.
A collection of T. S. Eliot’s unpublished correspondence with members of the Faber publishing family was recently sold at a London auction for $436,725. The collection included a set of 50 letters addressed to Tom Faber, the son of publisher Geoffrey Faber (and Eliot’s godson), which sold for $82,300.
The MacArthur Foundation recently announced that novelist Jonathan Lethem is among the 25 recipients of this year's "genius" fellowships. Each award is worth $500,000.
A group of sixteen authors, including Michael Chabon, Andrew Sean Greer, Jonathan Lethem, Stephen King, and ZZ Packer, have joined together to auction opportunities to name characters in their forthcoming books on eBay.
Six authors were recently shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize. The prize, sponsored by the Man Group investment company, is given for the best novel of the year by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland.
Much has been written about some judges rewarding friends and former students, and I worry that a few questionable practices have detracted from the hundreds of contests that bring recognition to so many well-deserving writers. Nevertheless, there are steps that all of us—editors, judges, and writers—can take to help keep contests clean.
This month the Library of America, the nonprofit publisher founded in 1979 to “preserve our nation’s literary heritage,” will release the first two installments of a planned eight-volume edition of Philip Roth’s collected fiction.
