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It all started when Rufus Hareball lost his job and moved in with us. He had been working for the International Pet Patrol agency and was the best detective in the Feline Search Patrol Unit. Pet owners no longer needed the services of I.P.P. Micro chips now locate the strays and reunite the lost with the distraught.
Next-generation plastic displays are due soon from the world’s largest manufacturer of e-reader screens; Nebraska is losing two indie bookstores this season; Sony has added more digital newspapers to its roster; a new tool lets academic publishers sell e-books directly; and other news.
Crazyhorse, a literary journal published by the College of Charleston, announced on Monday that the deadline for its poetry and fiction prizes has been extended. Explaining that they needed a little more time to get their new Web site—complete with electronic submission system—up and running, the journal says that it will now accept entries for the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize until January 15.
Writers may submit up to three poems or a story of no more than twenty-five pages via the online entry system or regular mail. A sixteen-dollar entry fee includes a one-year subscription to the magazine. Guidelines are detailed on the Crazyhorse Web site.
The 2009 prize winners are Kary Wayson, a Seattle poet, for "Lives of the Artists," and Elizabeth Oness of Houston, Minnesota, for her story "Protect and Serve." James Tate was the poetry judge, and Ann Patchett selected the winning story. The names of the 2010 judges will be revealed when the winners are announced in the spring. Writers such as Billy Collins, Dean Young, Mary Ruefle, Charles Baxter, and Dan Chaon have served as judges during the awards' nine-year history.
The year was 1976. It was a hot and humid August evening. As I climbed up the subway stairs in Downtown,there was a fine drizzle in the air. I was on my home from my job in Manhattan. As soon as I opened the door to my little efficiency apartment, my four cats and little poodle, Babette, came running to greet me. They were always so happy when I came home.
The WTO has ordered China to liberalize its media import rules; the literary salon is making a comeback in Britain; Mag+ imagines the digital future of magazines; the NYPL is launching a new Web site; the Bible is the most frequently shoplifted book; and other news.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced the recipients of its annual fellowships in creative writing, given this year to prose writers. Forty-two writers, representing seventeen states and Washington, D.C., each received a twenty-five thousand dollar grant.
The fellows in fiction are:
Salar Abdoh, Lina Meruane, Matthew Sharpe, and Teddy Wayne, all of New York City
Jasmine Beach-Ferrara of Boston
Sean Brendan-Brown of Olympia, Washington
Serena Crawford and Ismet Prcic, both of Portland, Oregon
Michael Czyzniejewski of Bowling Green, Ohio
Barry Gifford and Michael David Lukas, both of Berkeley, California
Frances Hwang of South Bend, Indiana
Ben Jahn of Albany, California
Adam Johnson and Suzanne Rivecca, both of San Francisco
Sheri Joseph of Atlanta
Roy Kesey of Ukiah, California
Dylan Landis of Washington, D.C.
Margaret McMullan of Evansville, Illinois
Alison Moore of Driftwood, Texas
ZZ Packer of Austin, Texas
Rae Paris of Tempe, Arizona
Aimee Phan of Oakland;
Lewis Robinson of Portland, Maine
Robert Rosenberg of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Anne Sanow of Provincetown, Massachusetts
Gregory Blake Smith of Northfield, Minnesota
Leah Stewart of Cincinnati
Melanie Sumner of Rome, Georgia
Padma Viswanathan of Fayetteville, Arizona
Matthew Vollmer of Blacksburg, Virginia
Vinnie Wilhelm of Guilford, Connecticut
Simone Zelitch of Philadelphia
The fellows in creative nonfiction are:
Matthew Batt of Saint Paul
Douglas Bauer of Boston
Donovan Hohn of New York City
Daniel Raeburn of Chicago
Paul Reyes of Little Rock, Arkansas
Rebecca Solnit of San Francisco
Christina Thompson of Lincoln, Massachusetts
Joan Wickersham of Cambridge, Massachusetts
Frank B. Wilderson III of Irvine, California
The NEA received nearly one thousand eligible applications, 24 percent of which were in creative nonfiction and 76 percent in fiction. The ratio of awards given in each genre closely reflects the makeup of the application pool, with 21 percent of fellowships granted to creative nonfiction writers, and 79 percent to fiction writers.
This year's judging panel, which reviewed an estimated twenty-five thousand manuscript pages, included Michael Chabon, Bobbie Ann Mason, Kelly Link, William Henry Lewis, and Francisco Goldman.
The NEA's creative writing fellowships are given in alternating years to prose writers and poets. The next deadline, for poets, is March 4, 2010.
In the video below, creative nonfiction fellow Joan Wickersham reads from her 2008 book The Suicide Index (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a finalist for the National Book Award.
My home for twenty-two years was beautiful, warm Grenada, West Indies. I was born five years before World War two started. The war affected every one in the island as we depended on imported goods including foods, manufactured goods, textiles, which came by boats from other larger countries. The Caribbean Sea was not safe from the enemies patrolling the area.
I was born in a Bamboo Sea. That was the name of my home town because we were surrounded by bamboo wherever we went. When I was a baby, my cradle and my toys were all made of bamboo—my special little round red lantern, a box, a turtle and a rabbit. It’s true, I grew up with bamboo.
Thanks for inventing the photograph technique, so that people can take pictures of their daily lives and then remember past events that were happy or sad. A picture is a record of a family’s history and a witness to the development of the family. I would like to introduce my four pictures to you.
