Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary for the Swedish Academy and top jury member for the Nobel Prize, sent ripples through the literary community yesterday when he criticized American writers in an interview with the Associated Press.

The National Book Foundation announced yesterday the five debut fiction writers who will be honored at the third annual 5 Under 35 celebration.

Poet Jennifer Karmin is asking for anyone and everyone to collaborate with her on a four thousand word poem to be performed in her hometown of Chicago. Each word represents one of the more than forty-one hundred American soldiers killed in Iraq.

Fiction writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of twenty-five individuals from a variety of professional fields to receive a $500,000 "genius" fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. MacArthur president Jonathan Fanton said the winners received a phone call last week informing them that they would receive the unconditional "no strings attached" support over the next five years. 

The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference announced on Friday its plans to partner with Graywolf Press to publish the winners of the conference's Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize, given annually for first books of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

A new Arabic translation initiative is asking Americans to weigh in on what books of poetry and fiction best represent the literature of the United States.

The relatives of poet Federico García Lorca, who was executed by fascists in the early morning hours of August 18, 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, recently agreed to allow authorities to excavate the mass grave, located in a village near Granada, Spain, where he is believed to be buried.