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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..."
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.
