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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In translation, several awards are offered, including grants of between two and ten thousand dollars each for unpublished translations.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.
Good question! Watch as Richard from AbeBooks explains that the unique aroma comes from the reaction of a book's organic material to heat, light, moisture, and the chemicals used in its production. What's your favorite-smelling book?
"When it occurred to me I'd never read Wise Blood (Harcourt, Brace, 1952) by Flannery O'Connor, I felt I'd be missing something if I didn't. I'd read a book of her short stories and saw the movie Wise Blood long ago so perhaps I imagined I'd read it; though, I'd never knowingly substitute the movie for the book. As expected, it's an amazing read. A minor annoyance is wading through the dialect spellings she uses, but beyond that the book is a marvelous mix of clear writing and language with impenetrable yet vivid characters.
Deconstruct a short story that you find particularly powerful. First, identify the point-of-view and the characters. Then outline the plot. Finally, make a chart with two columns: In the first column, describe what happens in each paragraph of the story; in the second column, analyze why it happens, how it serves the larger story. Apply what you learn as you revise a story-in-the-works or begin a new one.
Executive director Tree Swenson will leave the the Academy of American Poets; Alexander Nazaryan explains why Vladimir Putin's recent literary proposal is an assault on freedom; author Luc Sante writes of his first encounter with the work of Patti Smith; and other news.
“Last year was a big year for me. I birthed a baby (my second) and a book (my first). Unfortunately, reading for pleasure was a casualty of all this creative activity. I found time to read exactly four books last year. One was a book about how to put your baby to sleep; another was Tamar Adler’s phenomenal paean to better living through simple-yet-righteous eating, An Everlasting Meal (Scribner, 2011).
From a series of ampersand images created by visual poet Gary Barwin.
