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Write a scene for a story, using third-person narration, that opens with your main character having just done something despicable. Despite what he or she has done, find a way in writing the rest of the scene to make your character sympathetic without letting him or her off the hook.
Earlier this week the U.K. Poetry Book Society (PBS) announced the winner of the prize two notable poets found too controversial to covet. The T. S. Eliot Prize, a fifteen-thousand-pound award (approximately $23,110) given for a book of poetry published in the previous year, went to John Burnside for his eleventh collection, Black Cat Bone (Jonathan Cape).
A little over a month ago, finalists John Kinsella (Armour, Picador) and Alice Oswald (Memorial, Faber and Faber) withdrew their respective collections from the prize running in protest of the recently-announced cosponsorship of the award by Aurum, an investment banking firm. Aurum's funding replaces that denied the PBS this year by Arts Council England, though Valerie Eliot, the late poet's widow, is reported to be the Eliot Prize's major sponsor.
The remaining finalists were Carol Ann Duffy for The Bees (Picador), Leontia Flynn for Profit and Loss (Jonathan Cape), David Harsent for Night (Faber and Faber), Esther Morgan for Grace (Bloodaxe Books), Daljit Nagra for Tippoo Sultan's Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!! (Faber and Faber), Sean O'Brien for November (Picador), and Bernard O'Donoghue for Farmer's Cross (Faber and Faber). Each finalist received one thousand pounds (approximately $1,540).
In the video below, Burnside discusses the title of his winning book and the subjects he's gone on to research, including the Weather Underground activists of the 1970s.
The Academy of American Poets announced that poets Toi Derricotte, Jane Hirshfield, and Arthur Sze have been elected to its Board of Chancellors; novelist Jennifer Weiner compared the frequency of male and female authors reviewed by the New York Times in 2011; J.D. Salinger biographer Kenneth Slawenski ponders what the reclusive author was writing; and other news.
Choose an incident from your past—it could be an ordinary occurrence, such as a family dinner—or a significant event, such as an achievement or a mishap. Write about it from your perspective, then write about it from the perspective of someone else who experienced it with you—a friend, sibling, or parent.
“I read contemporary writers, and, since I'm writing nonfiction these days, I tend to read memoir. I also try to reread, pulling some Chekov, Flannery O'Connor or Virginia Woolf down from the shelf. My favorite book is usually the most recent book I've read, and the last book I read in 2011 was The Free World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) by David Bezmozgis, a surprise choice by a member of our small Jewish book group. None of us except the person who chose the novel had heard of Bezmozgis.
The Broken Tower, the Hart Crane biopic writen, directed, and starring James Franco, was released this week and can now be downloaded or viewed on demand. There's been a lot of speculation about the film ever since Franco aquired the rights to Paul Mariani's biography of the same title, but at least one critic isn't impressed. Writing in Slate, Evan Hughes called the film "incredibly dull."
An Arizona school district has banned a long list of books, including Mexican-American history textbooks, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Ezra Pound's daughter is suing an Italian neo-fascist group who've named themselves CasaPound; GalleyCat reports on what editors are looking for in 2012; and other news.
“My favorite book of 2011 was ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot (Crown, 2010). I read the book in three days during a trip to Mexico over the summer, and I embodied the ‘could-not-put-it-down’ cliché. I brought the book with me to meals and read it while eating. I sat in a room by myself for hours with this book, ignoring the beach, the sun, and all human contact. Skloot tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman whose cancerous cells were taken from her without her knowledge in the 1950s.
Did you read the latest issue of Poets & Writers Magazine? Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein star in Portlandia, currently in its second season on the Independent Film Channel.
Take a poem you feel is finished, and divide the poem in half. Write two new poems by filling in those two halves.
