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In the Realms of the Unreal, a documentary film directed by Jessica Yu, explores the mystery of Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor in Chicago who wrote perhaps the world's longest novel and became one of the most famous figures in outsider art.
We sat down with Elissa Schappell recently at a favorite New York City watering hole, Clandestino, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and over drinks and olives discussed the crucial role her long-time agent Joy Harris played in the writing of Schappell's recently published story collection Blueprints for Building Better Girls, published by Simon & Schuster in September. The book received considerable attention, making several “best of 2011” lists. It was also notable for appearing ten years after her debut, Use Me, a collection of linked short stories published by Morrow in 2000.
As is often the case when a first-time author sells a book of short fiction to a major publisher, the contract with Morrow was a two-book deal. The second book—at the time unwritten—was slated to be a novel, which traditionally perform better in the marketplace. Just as Schappell had done when she was writing Use Me, after she completed a substantial portion of the draft, which took a few years, she showed the manuscript to Joy Harris. Watch the video to hear what happened next.
“Though novels are what inspired me to want to be a writer—those of Salinger, Atwood, Nabokov, Winterson—I’ve spent most of my actual writing career publishing memoir and personal essays. Now that I’m knee deep into my first novel, though, I’ve been gorging on fiction again. In 2011 I loved Elissa Schappell’s Use Me (Harper Perennial, 2001), Kate Christensen’s The Astral (Doubleday, 2011), Helen Schulman’s This Beautiful Life (Harper, 2011), Eileen Myles’s Inferno, and Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia (Scribner, 2011).
Jonathan Galassi's new book, Left-handed, tells the story of a married man in mid-life who discovers he's gay; novelist Justin Torres and his mom, Theresa, recall their versions of a crisis that happened when Justin was a teenager; publishing industry veteran Jane Friedman explains how to get your book published; and other news.
The Detroit-based Kresge Foundation has awarded its 2012 Eminent Artist Award to Naomi Long Madgett, poet laureate of the city and author of ten poetry collections. Also a teacher and the founder of forty-year-old Lotus Press, Madgett received the fifty-thousand-dollar prize in honor of her contributions to poetry as well as her work promoting African American literature.
Foundation president Rip Rapson called Madgett "the embodiment of what it means to be an eminent artist," praising the poet for pursuing "a life of creativity while supporting other writers and poets, reaching across generations to spark in young people a love of words and writing, and maintaining a deep and abiding to commitment to the Detroit community."
"I've worked all my life trying to help people, poets and students," Madgett says. "I think we are here to serve. There’s a hymn—'If I Can Help Somebody'—that goes, 'If I can help somebody, as I pass along, then my living shall not be in vain.' It makes me very happy to leave a legacy of words that other people can relate to."
Previous winners of the Eminent Artist Award include poet and playwright Bill Harris, jazz trumpet player Marcus Belgrave, and visual artist Charles McGee, all of Detroit. The winners are nominated by an advisory council and selected by an independent panel, which this year included musicians Larry Gabriel and James E. Hart; Rebecca Mazzei, deputy director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Robin Terry, chairman and executive director of the Motown Historical Museum; and Marilyn Wheaton, director of the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum.
Below is a video poem of Madgett's "Alabama Centennial," originally collected in the book Star by Star, published by Detroit's Harlo Press in 1965.
This feature-length documentary, directed and produced by Doug Wilson, explores how the Linotype type casting machine (called the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by Thomas Edison) revolutionized printing and society and had a suprisingly powerful impact on people's lives.
Tess Gallagher, Raymond Carver's widow, has filed a lawsuit against Skyhorse Publishing over Carver Country: The World of Raymond Carver; Radhika Jones explains why she loves reading Charles Dickens; Susan Orlean discusses her love of Faulkner; and other news.
“I read a lot of poetry in 2011 as I was working on my own collection, looking at other contemporary poets’ books to see how they make the poems work together, how the poems hold together, or fail to cohere, or purposely resist easy cohesion. Despite this analytic approach, of course I fell in love with poems and poets along the way. My favorite and perhaps the bravest book I read was Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's Love Cake (TSAR, 2011). First of all, it’s such a great title—it’s so evocative and also the name of a dessert from the poet’s father’s ancestral land, Sri Lanka.
The closing date is less than a week away for New York City-based PEN American Center's literary competitions for poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, and translators.
The five-thousand-dollar Open Book Award is given for a book of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction by an author of color. Award alumni include poets Harryette Mullen and Willie Perdomo, fiction writer Victor LaValle, and creative nonfiction writer Joy Harjo.
In fiction, the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize offers twenty-five thousand dollars for a first novel or story collection published in 2011. Danielle Evans, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Monique Truong are among past winners.
Essayists may enter the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, which awards five thousand dollars for a collection published in 2011. Last year's winner was Mark Slouka for Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations (Graywolf Press, 2010).
In translation, several awards are offered, including grants of between two and ten thousand dollars each for unpublished translations. One three-thousand dollar prize competition is open specifically to published translations of poetry, another to works in any genre.
PEN also gives prizes in biography, children's and young adult literature, sports writing, science writing, and drama. For more information and guidelines, visit the organization's website.
Business Week focuses on the work of Larry Kirshbaum, the book-industry veteran hired last May to head Amazon Publishing; the Millions examines copyright and the future of intellectual property; Paris Review Daily reveals the odd and interwoven events surrounding the publication of Jack Green's Fire the Bastards!; and other news.
