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More in-depth coverage of the rejected Google Books Settlement; the Best Translated Book Award finalists; Barnes & Noble can't find a buyer; the It Gets Better Project publishes a book; and other news.
In celebration of Women's History Month, the folks at Open Road Media put together this clip of some of their authors talking about "the suffragettes, poets, novelists, daughters, and grandmothers whose courage, talent, and dedication serve as daily inspiration in their work."
In the third person, write a scene using three different modes of narrative distance. First, using an objective point of view, describe a woman boarding a bus. Use only actions, expressions, and dialogue; make no judgments about the scene or about her interior life. Then, using the omniscient point of view, describe the woman striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to her. You can still describe what you see on the "outside," but now, reveal something "inside" that only a privileged narrator would know. (Is she late for work? Is she worried about something? Is she bored by the conversation?) Finally, shift into stream of consciousness as the woman gets off the bus. Continue to access the woman's thoughts, feelings, and memories, but use the language of the character herself, revealing "the process as well as the content of the mind," as Janet Burroway says. This wide range of voices may be extreme, but it allows for a full portrait of a character's inner and outer life—and reminds us that no point of view is static.
This week's fiction prompt comes from fiction writer Eleanor Henderson, whose first novel, Ten Thousand Saints, will be published by Ecco in June.
Judge Chin rejects the $125 million Google Books Settlement; Lendl is back in business after a media kerfuffle; arts education alternatives to the MFA; the Blackberry Playbook steps up to challenge the iPad 2; and other news.
Last December Ivan Tresoldi, a street poetry artist from Milano, Italy, led a workshop for young Kosovo Serbian poets and artists sponsored by forumZFD, a bipartisan organization with a mission to push for "the realization of the idea of a Civilian Peace Service." The aim of the workshop was to help participants deal with the past and create poetry and art along the topic of memories and identities. For more information about Kosovo, visit the State Department's Web site.
In this Burning Down the House, author and educator Charles Baxter offers several essays that examine the many forces currently shaping contemporary American fiction.
Amanda Hocking goes traditional for a million dollars; the tenth annual E-poetry Festival in Buffalo, New York; Microsoft sues Barnes & Noble; electronic-publishing bingo; and other news.
"My excuse for looking like this? I'm a writer," declares Eddie Spinola in Limitless, the film adaptation of Alan Glynn's second novel starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, in theaters now.
Kansas-born poet Ben Lerner, author of Mean Free Path (2010), Angle of Yaw (2006), and The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), has become the first American poet to win the Preis für International Poesie der Stadt Münster, a poetry translation award given biennially by the city of Münster, Germany. Lerner, whose books are all published by Copper Canyon Press, won for his debut collection, translated into German by Steffen Popp as Die Lichtenbergfiguren and published by Germany’s Luxbooks.
Past winners of the prize, given since 1993, include Tomaž Šalamun, Hugo Claus, Zbigniew Herbert, and Inger Christensen. Lerner was selected for the tenth award by judges Urs Allemann, Michael Braun, Cornelia Jentzsch, Johan P. Tammen, Wendela Beate Vilhjalmsson, and Norbert Wehr.
In the video below, Lerner reads from The Lichtenberg Figures at the College of New Jersey.
Today is World Poetry Day; Kwame Anthony Appiah is reelected as president of the PEN American Center; the world's first e-book library opens in China; a Brazilian pop singer gets nearly eight hundred thousand dollars to start a poetry blog; and other news.
