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“And who but you would take me in / A thousand kisses deep.” In this video, Leonard Cohen reads his poem “A Thousand Kisses Deep” to a lively audience. The legendary songwriter, poet, and artist passed away on November 10 at the age of eighty-two.
Books to help understand Trump’s win; illustrations of bookstores around the world; contemporary Thai literature in translation; and other news.
As part of the Singapore Literature Festival in New York City, Alfian Sa’at, Ovidia Yu, Naomi Jackson, and Jason Koo read from their work and discuss the invisibilities and visibilities of race and gender at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
As the dust settles from this year’s U.S. presidential election, think of a time in your youth when you participated in a school election or were involved with the student council. Were you optimistic of the changes that could be made? Did you vote with enthusiasm or take part in any protests? Write an essay reflecting on your experiences and what was important to you then, and how this might say something about who you are today.
This Friday marks the deadline for editors to nominate stories for a new annual fiction prize. Sponsored by PEN America and Catapult, the inaugural PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers honors twelve emerging fiction writers for debut short stories published in the previous year. Twelve winning writers will each receive a prize of $2,000, and their stories will be included in an annual anthology, The PEN America Best Debut Short Stories, to be published by Catapult.
Debut stories published in online magazines, cultural websites, or print magazines distributed in the U.S. in 2016 are eligible. A debut story is defined by PEN as the writer’s first short story publication that has undergone an editorial review process and has been accepted and published by a publication with which the author is not professionally affiliated. Authors must be either U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents.
Using the online submission system, editors of participating publications may submit up to four stories of no more than 12,000 words each, along with the required eligibility and consent form, by Friday, November 11. Authors may not submit their own work. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
The winners will be honored at the annual PEN Literary Awards ceremony in New York City.
Launched this year, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize aims to help launch the careers of new writers. The award is named for and supported by the family of Robert J. Dau, a Petoskey, Michigan–based arts advocate who passed away last year.
Science fiction novels with a political bent; literary podcasts; former National Book Award judge argues against the awards’ recent changes; and other news.
The forty-three essays in this book feature writers focusing on fellow writers—reflecting on their contemporaries, as well as influential and inspirational authors from previous eras. First published in Vanity Fair between 1983 and 2016, the collection includes pieces such as Elizabeth Bishop on Marianne Moore, Martin Amis on Saul Bellow, Jacqueline Woodson on James Baldwin, Meg Wolitzer on Judy Blume, Nadine Gordimer on Wole Soyinka, and Christopher Hitchens on Stieg Larsson.
The Saharan silver ant is able to survive in the extreme temperatures of the Sahara Desert, which often reaches almost 120 degrees Fahrenheit, with the help of physiological adaptations including highly reflective hairs that deflect the sun’s rays and longer legs, keeping them further above the hot sand. Write a short story that explores how a human character adapts when placed in a geographical location with extreme atmospheric conditions. Is your character alone or part of a pack? You may choose to write a story based in reality, or one that incorporates elements of the fantastic.
Little Free Library celebrates fifty thousand locations; researchers create algorithm for machine to determine a book’s genre by its cover; poet Jim Harrison’s final interview; and other news.
At the culminating event for Creative Time Summit DC: Occupy the Future, a conference on art and social change, participants convened in front of the White House for a collective reading of artist Zoe Leonard’s 1992 text piece, “I want a president....” Organized by Natalie Campbell and Saisha Grayson, an adaptation of the piece, which focused on current concerns created through community writing workshops and online discussions, was also recited.
