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Two American journalists who were arrested on March 17, presumably at the border between North Korea and China, have been tried and sentenced to twelve years hard labor, North Korea’s official news agency, KCNA, recently announced. The state agency accused the women, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, of “illegal border crossing” and described their punishment as “reform through labor.”
ScrollMotion, a developer of applications for Apple's iPhone, announced yesterday that it will release a new digital book reader for the device that will offer users a more comprehensive reading experience.
By now you've probably read Louis Menand's article about creative writing programs in the current issue of the New Yorker—or read an article by someone who's read the Louis Menand article. From the first paragraph, in which Menand uses the phrase "ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy" to describe the writing workshop, he's got your attention. One can assume Teachers & Writers Collaborative is looking for similarly captivating prose for its Bechtel Prize. The fifteen-hundred-dollar award is given annually for an essay that relates to creative writing education, literary studies, or the profession of writing. The deadline is June 30.
If you need help getting your Bechtel essay-writing hat on, you might want to consider taking the poll over at the New Yorker's Book Bench: So far, 57% of respondents say they enjoyed their MFA experience, while only 49% consider the experience worth it.
Then again, you may want to avoid Menand's article and the poll altogether and write something from your own experience—especially if you've been scarred by that years-long, twelve-on-one therapy session. You have an MFA, right? Use it.
McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers says his quarterly’s next issue intends to prove the viability of print by adopting a newspaper format. Eggers made the announcement at an Authors Guild gathering in New York City last month, where he was being feted for his charity work with the nonprofit 826 National.
Marilynne Robinson on Wednesday was named winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction at a ceremony in London. She won for her third novel, Home (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). "This year's Orange Prize winner has a luminous quality to it that has drawn all of the judges to a unanimous decision," said Fi Glover, chair of the judging panel. "The profound nature of the writing stood out, as has the ability of the writer to draw the reader into a world of hope, expectation, misunderstanding, love, and kindness." Robinson, who was chosen over finalists Ellen Feldman, Samantha Harvey, Samantha Hunt, Deidre Madden, and Kamila Shamsie, will receive £30,000 (nearly $44,000).
Also on Wednesday, Francesca Kay was named winner of the Orange Award for New Writers for An Equal Stillness (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). Judge Mishal Husain called the novel "a brilliant evocation of an artist struggling to meet the demands of her domestic life." Kay will receive a bursary, or scholarship, of £10,000 (approximately $14,645).
Between January and April, Oxford University Press added 1.5 million public “tweets” to its Oxford English Corpus, a vast electronic database that collects examples of words in context. Among the findings: Language use on Twitter tends to focus on the self and the present, while the social networking service’s insistence on brevity gives rise to some creative solutions.
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison was the featured guest at last night’s inauguration of the Free Speech Leadership Council, a new initiative organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). As part of the event, Morrison spoke with author Fran Lebowitz at the home of council chair and former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman in New York City.
C. D. Wright, who was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize in 2003 for Steal Away but lost to Paul Muldoon, took the top honor this year for her twelfth book, Rising, Falling, Hovering. She will receive $50,000 Canadian, or approximately $45,950. Rising, Falling, Hovering was published last April by Copper Canyon, the same press that published W. S. Merwin's 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning volume The Shadow of Sirius. Wrighted edged out three other finalists, including Dean Young, whose collection Primitive Mentor was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The winner of the Canadian prize is A. F. Moritz for The Sentinel (House of Anansi Press). In September, both winners will be invited to Reykjavik, Iceland, to read at the International Literary Festival.
The announcements were made yesterday in Toronto at an awards ceremony hosted by Scott Griffin, founder of the prize, and Margaret Atwood, Carolyn Forché, Robert Hass, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Robertson, and David Young.
German poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger was also honored at the ceremony with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Tin House magazine turns ten this year, and Literary Arts, a cultural organization located in the magazine’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, is gathering over a dozen notable writers to celebrate the occasion.
The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, recently announced the winners of the 2008 Arab American Book Awards. The annual prizes are given to authors, editors, or illustrators of books "that preserve and advance the understanding, knowledge, and resources of the Arab American community" in order to inspire authors and educate readers about the community.
(Here's a little education from the press release: The twenty-two Arab countries are Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros Islands, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.)
The winner in poetry is Suheir Hammad for breaking poems (Cypher Books). Randa Jarrar won in fiction for A Map of Home: A Novel (Other Press). The winner in nonfiction is Moustafa Bayoumi for How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America (Penguin Press). And poet Naomi Shihab Nye won in the category of children or young adult for Honeybee: Poems & Short Prose (Greenwillow Books).
Below is a video of Hammad at the Palestinian Festival of Literature in Ramallah last month.
