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Laura Miller explains why the HBO show The Wire is not like a Victorian novel; Chava Rosenfarb writes the untold story of poet Simkha-Bunim Shayevitch; Charles Bernstein remembers Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko; and other news.
The latest adaptation of Emily Brontë's 1847 novel, directed by Andrea Arnold and starring James Howson, Solomon Glave, and Paul Hilton, opens in theaters on October 5.
Extreme experiences can significantly alter our perspective on life. Write an essay about a time when you faced a near-death experience, or believed you were in serious danger. Consider the following questions: How did you react immediately? How did you respond later? In retrospect, do you wish you'd reacted differently when it happened? What from the experience do you still carry with you?
A Junot Díaz reading last night in New York City reached near riot proportions; writer Gretl Claggett has launched a campaign to raise funds for a short film based on a poem; the first event of PEN America's annual Lit Crawl starts tonight in in New York City; and other news.
One of a writer’s most powerful tools is sensory perception. As an exercise, deprive yourself of stimulation. Sit quietly in a dark room, turn off and hide your electronics, and avoid becoming distracted. Try this for an entire day, or whatever time span you can manage. After leaving yourself alone with your thoughts for some time, write a story inspired by your musings. Try starting with a single sentence that may have risen to the surface during your day.
The shortlist for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious annual awards for literary fiction, was announced today.
The finalists include: Tan Twan Eng for The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books), Deborah Levy for Swimming Home (And Other Stories), Hilary Mantel for Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate), Alison Moore for The Lighthouse (Salt), Will Self for Umbrella (Bloomsbury), and Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis (Faber & Faber).
The six short-listed titles were culled from the original longlist of twelve, which were announced in July.
On the Man Booker website, Chair of Judges Peter Stothard said: “After re-reading an extraordinary longlist of twelve, it was the pure power of prose that settled most debates. We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose—and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas.”
The Man Booker Prize is given annually for a work of fiction published in the previous year by a writer from the United Kingdom, British Commonwealth, or Republic of Ireland. The winner of the 2012 prize will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on October 16. Each of the six short-listed writers is awarded £2,500. The winner receives an additional £50,000.
Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies is the follow-up to Wolf Hall, the first in a trilogy, which took the prize in 2009. Ladbrokes, the British betting firm who has recently set its sights on literary awards, projects Mantel to win the prize again this year.
In the video below, Mantel introduces Bring up the Bodies, which was published this past May.
Lettering at the September 11 Memorial Museum—a line from Virgil's Aeneid—will be made from salvaged steel from the World Trade Center; Terence Davies will direct a screen adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's A Quiet Passion with Cynthia Nixon cast as poet Emily Dickinson; Oxford American has hired Roger D. Hodge to replace ousted founding editor Marc Smirnoff; and other news.
Read up on a famous figure (living or dead) whose personality is completely different from your own. Write a poem from that person's perspective about an important event or series of events that shaped who he or she was.
On a train from Sydney to Melbourne, four family members each wrote a short poem with the same title to create this simple yet touching video.
Designer John H. Locke has transformed pay phone booths into lending libraries; Stanford researchers are studying how reading a Jane Austen novel alters the brain, Philip Roth sets Wikipedia straight on his inspiration for The Human Stain; and other news.
