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As financial hardships continue to affect universities and colleges across the country, an increasing number of university presses are facing the threat of closures—and some aren't going down without a fight.
One of the few existing literary magazines in translation, Monkey Business is a new journal of Japanese writing, translated into English by founding editors Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen and published annually in the United States and Canada by the Brooklyn-based A Public Space.
Penguin and Random House have reached an agreement to combine—creating the largest book publisher in the world; Flavorpill has an essential stormy weather reading list; Publishers Weekly lists terrible reviews of classic literature; and other news.
In this video Open Road Media salutes the work of three bestselling authors—Gloria Steinem, Virginia Hamilton, and Patricia Gaffney—who battled breast cancer. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month; for more information visit www.nbcam.org
The Whiting Foundation recently announced the winners of its 2012 literary awards, which offer ten grants of $50,000 to emerging poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and playwrights.
The 2012 Whiting Award recipients include nonfiction writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts of New York City, whose first book, Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America (Little, Brown, 2011), was among the 100 Notable Books of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; poet Ciaran Berry of Hartford, Connecticut, whose first full-length collection, The Sphere of Birds, (Southern Illinois University Press, 2008) won the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition in 2007; poet Atsuro Riley of San Francisco, whose first book, Romey’s Order (University of Chicago Press, 2010) won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Believer Poetry Award, and the Witter Bynner Award from the Library of Congress; fiction writer Alan Heathcock of Boise, Idaho, whose short story collection Volt (Graywolf Press, 2011) was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize; fiction writer Anthony Marra of Oakland, California, whose debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, and short story collection, The Tsar of Love and Techno, will be published in 2013 and 2014, respectively, by Hogarth Press; and fiction writer Hanna Pylväinen of New York City, whose debut novel, We Sinners, was published this past summer by Henry Holt.
Four playwrights, Danai Gurira, Samuel Hunter, Mona Mansour, and Meg Miroshnik also received the awards.
The "no strings attached" grants are given to writers whose early work suggests a promising literary career to come. Past recipients of the Whiting Award have included Michael Cunningham, Mark Doty, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Tracy K. Smith, John Jeremiah Sullivan, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead, and C. D. Wright.
The New York City-based Whiting Foundation has given the Whiting Awards annually since 1985. Candidates are nominated for the award by literary professionals, and an anonymous selection committee of accomplished writers, editors, and literary scholars appointed by the Whiting Foundation chooses the winners. There is no application process.
Two of the world's largest publishers, Random House and Penguin, are discussing a merger; novelist Rick Moody was the victim of a ring of hackers and identity thieves; Donald Hall provides thoughts on the ubiquitous public poetry reading, and rich details from his career as an acclaimed poet; and other news.
Yet another film adaptation of an amazing novel! Based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Salman Rushdie and directed by Oscar-nominated Deepa Mehta, Midnight's Children is scheduled to open in theaters on November 2.
In the United Kingdom, thieves robbed Brontë Chapel, where the Brontë sisters were baptized; Arthur Krystal explores the sometimes-heated discussion concerning genre and literary fiction; literary agent Janet Reid offers advice to writers interested in self-publishing.
He should probably stick to acting. Watch Tom Hanks perform his poem about the 1990s sitcom "Full House" on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon."
One of the most dangerous pitfalls of creative nonfiction can be chronology, and some of the best essays are written in a nonlinear fashion. Think of a story that you know by heart--maybe a memory from your childhood, of finding first love, or of the birth of a child--and try to retell it without using typical chronologically. Start from the end and work your way back, or alternate between scenes of present and past. The result should be an essay that keeps the reader always moving but never quite sure of what comes next.
