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Poet Donald Hall writes about aging in his family's long-time New Hampshire farmhouse; the New York Times unravels a scandal at the venerable National Arts Club; writer Emma Straub lists three "rich and snooty" novels to supplement your viewing of Downton Abbey; and other news.
"I recommend Aracelis Girmay's Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011). Girmay is a poet-friend, and my friend Carla provided the cover artwork, so I came by it naturally and eagerly awaited its release for some time. Still, I could not have anticipated the ways in which this book moved me. There is such honesty, clarity, and passion to these poems, soaring directly to the heart. Mid-book, I found myself rushing to old journals to discover poems in them—suddenly desperate to write my own truths as accurately as possible.
This two-channel video installation by Nancy Stamatopoulou and Ash Bulayev, part of last year's Athens Video Art Festival, is inspired in part by Gertude Stein's essay “The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind.”
Two competitions that appeared in our January/February 2012 issue's Deadlines section are offering writers a bit of wiggle room to make contest submissions.
Third Coast magazine, which had originally set the deadline for its poetry and fiction contests at January 15, will now accept entries until January 31. The awards, given for a poem and a short story, include one thousand dollars and publication, and are judged by Major Jackson and Jaimy Gordon, respectively.
Literary nonprofit the Word Works, whose Washington Prize deadline has always fallen at the beginning of March, will accept poetry manuscript submissions until March 15, in an effort to offer some extra time for writers involved in this year's Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference. "The deadline was pushed in order to give folks attending AWP, which lands on and around March 1, our usual deadline, more time," says Word Works president Nancy White. "Getting ready for and recovering from a conference takes a lot of energy, so we were afraid submissions might get lost in the flurry for some people. Also, we love the chance to answer questions about the contest at our booth."
For more information about these awards and other upcoming deadlines, visit our searchable, sortable Grants & Awards database.
Salman Rushdie will not attend the Jaipur Literature Festival in India due to death threats; the Wall Street Journal examines the new business of enhanced e-books; Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk offers thirteen tips for writers, and other news.
“Every year, my reading list is split into two parts: books I read for myself, and books I read for my job. I work at the National Book Foundation, the nonprofit organization that presents the National Book Awards (NBA). Starting in mid-October, when we announce the year’s twenty finalists, I spend every spare moment reading the books that are up for the Awards.
One proud parent put together this amusing video of poet-toddler Elliot who, like all the great bards, uses "the fewest words to convey the greatest meaning."
Today, Apple launched iBooks Author, which enable authors to create and publish e-books; Whiting Writers' Award-winner Teddy Wayne answers Jennifer Weiner's accusation of gender bias in book reviews; novelist Jessica Francis Kane discusses the particularities of writing with small children at home; and other news.
“My reading habits this past year have been all over the map—a lot of nonfiction and fiction, mostly contemporary. I tend to choose what to read based on what I stumble upon through excerpts, National Public Radio, random finds via Kindle selections, that sort of thing. In doing so, I realized that the actual journey in finding something good to read is what I like best about reading.
In one of the darkest book trailers in recent memory, Erin Cosgrove presents this short film based on Ben Marcus's The Flame Alphabet, published this month by Knopf. "In the beginning was the word, and it made people sick..."
