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The first in a series of three readings and discussions celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Poetry Society of America's Chapbook Fellowship features 2006 winner Dan Chelotti alongside that year's judge, Pulitzer Prize-winner Yusef Komunyakaa, introduced by PSA executive director Alice Quinn at New York City's Strand Book Store.
If you've spent a significant amount of time using New York City's transit system during the past two decades, chances are you've come across Donald Green, who writes and sells his poems to commuters riding the city's subways and refers to himself as "The NY Times Published Poet." (One of his poems was reprinted in the paper as part of an article by Bruce Weber back in 2000). In this video by Rebecca Sanchez, Green reads some of his recent work.
The New York Times interviews Jason Merkoski, the leader of the team who built Amazon's first Kindle; Chilean authorities have exhumed Pablo Neruda to test his remains for poison; Anne Margaret Daniel details how F. Scott Fitzgerald reacted to the first film version of The Great Gatsby; and other news.
How is social media impacting the role of the literary agent?
Social media gives writers a means to connect directly to readers in a way that has never existed before. Using social media is not for everyone, but a smart agent will learn from the successes and creativity of those authors who are embracing it and pass along those examples to other authors who may be more apprehensive. I have also found it to be invaluable in gathering information. I love being able to interpret from the buzz online what readers are responding to. I think it helps tremendously in making me a better adviser to my clients.
Publishing Perspectives looks at how bad news often brings the literary community together; David Yezzi shares his thoughts on the needs of contemporary poetry; Adelle Waldman reveals what she's gleaned by reading the Jane Austen canon; and other news.
In the classic essay "Notes of a Native Son," James Baldwin writes about his relationship with his father, against the backdrop of a time of racial violence in America. Write an essay about your relationship with a parent and try to relate it to a larger aspect of the society and culture in which you were raised.
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation has announced that George Saunders will receive the 2013 PEN/Malamud Award. Given annually for a “body of work that demonstrates excellence in the art of short fiction,” the award comes with a five-thousand-dollar purse.
Considered a master of the short story, George Saunders’s most recent collection, Tenth of December, was published in January by Random House. A professor of creative writing at Syracuse University, his previous works include the story collections and novellas CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1997), Pastoralia (2001), The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2005), The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005), and In Persuasion Nation (2007), and an essay collection, The Braindead Megaphone (2007). He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, GQ, and the New York Times Magazine. Saunders has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and four National Magazine Awards.
“Saunders is one of the most gifted and seriously comic short story writers working in America today,” said Alan Cheuse, a member of the Malamud Award selection committee, which is comprised of a panel of PEN/Faulkner directors. “And his comedy, like most great comedy, is dark….He's a Vonnegutian in his soul and, paradoxically, a writer like no one but himself.”
In addition to the prize money, PEN/Malamud Award winners are also invited to give a reading as part of the PEN/Faulkner Reading Series at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. This year’s reading will take place in December.
Established in 1988, the PEN/Malamud Award honors the late writer Bernard Malamud. Past winners have included, among others, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty, Grace Paley, Stuart Dybek, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, Junot Diaz, Lorrie Moore, Tobias Wolff, Amy Hempel, Nam Le, Edith Pearlman, and James Salter.
Listen below as George Saunders discusses Tenth of December for the WNYC talk show Soundcheck.
Thessaly La Force remembers prize-winning author Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who died yesterday at her home in New York City, at age eighty-five; Aryn Kyle reveals how she spent the advance on her bestselling first novel; Architectural Digest takes a behind-the-scenes tour of the sets designed for Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; and other news.
In the most recent installment of P.O.P, Rachel Eliza Griffiths's video series about contemporary poetry and its culture, Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy K. Smith reads a poem by Seamus Heaney as well as an excerpt of one of her own poems, "My God, it's Full of Stars," and answers a question about whether poetry should address political issues.
The Associated Press drops “Illegal Immigrant” from its style book; Iain Banks announces that he has only months to live; Dave Bry highlights his own difficulties with writing memoir; and other news.
