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Algonquin Books expands; a sober look at the state of the publishing industry; writer José Manuel Prieto discusses the American authors he read as a child in Cuba; and other news.
Richard Nash, the former head of Soft Skull Press and currently the CEO of Cursor and publisher of Red Lemonade who's interviewed by Gabriel Cohen in the current issue's special section, is shown here at this year's BookExpo America, where he discussed the ongoing changes in the publishing industry.
Three major publishers announced they've added features that allow authors to access book sales data directly; today is National Day on Writing; novelist Adam Foulds discusses the nuances of using description; and other news.
In this footage from an interview with NBC's Tom Brokaw in the 1970s, Joan Didion, who is shown with her late husband John Gregory Dunne, talks about the power of writing ("It's the only aggressive act I have") and her love of California ("I'm not sure I could work in a city"). Of course, Didion moved to New York City in 1988 and has lived there ever since. Near the end of the clip, watch Didion's poignant response to Brokaw's question about her optimism about the future.
Drawn by some sympathetic note in one of his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of responses to a young would-be poet, on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. An accompanying chronicle of Rilke's life shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote these letters.
Pick a short story by another writer and use its ending as the beginning for a new story of your own.
The Man Booker Prize was awarded last night to British author Julian Barnes, who had been a contender for the honor on three previous occasions. The author, who once called the prize "posh bingo," won this year for his best-selling novel The Sense of an Ending, published earlier this month in the United States by Knopf (the original U.K. publisher is Jonathan Cape).
Barnes, who was a finalist in 1984, 1998, and 2005, says he stands by his earlier assessment of the award as a sort of game whose outcome is dependent on the fluctuating tastes of the judging panel. For shortlisted authors full of "hope and lust and greed and expectation" he suggests treating the award as a lottery—that is, until you win and "realize that the judges are the wisest heads in literary Christendom."
This year's chair of judges, Stella Rimington, whose Booker jury faced criticism earlier this year about its prioritization of accessible books over those of high literary merit, called Barnes's book "very readable, if I may use the word." She added that it has "the markings of a classic of English literature. It is exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading."
Barnes received fifty thousand pounds (approximately seventy-nine thousand dollars). The shortlisted authors each took home twenty-five hundred pounds (approximately thirty-nine thousand dollars).
In the video below, Barnes reacts to his win.
Author Naomi Wolf was arrested last night at an Occupy Wall Street protest; Denis Leary's hosting Ploughshares upcoming fortieth anniversary gala; Hunter S. Thompson's correspondence; and other news.
"My father, he'd say, 'You have to have a career.' I said, 'I want to be a writer.'" Born in Brooklyn in 1911, Ruth Gruber became the youngest PhD in the world before going on to become an international foreign correspondent and photojournalist at age twenty-four. "Ahead of Time," a documentary by Bob Richman, tells the story of how Gruber defied tradition in an extraordinary career that has spanned more than seven decades.
The eighth annual Story Prize, the twenty-thousand-dollar award given for a short story collection, will be judged by an award-winning fiction writer, a translator and international literature scholar, and a memoirist who curates a celebrated reading series.
Sherman Alexie, whose most recent story collection, War Dances (Grove Press, 2009), won the PEN/Faulkner Award, will be joined by Indiana University professor Breon Mitchell, who has translated the fiction of Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and Franz Kafka, among others. Completing the jury is Louise Steinman, curator of the Los Angeles Public Library's ALOUD reading and conversation series and author of the memoir The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War. The three will select the winner from a trio of finalists chosen by prize director Larry Dark and founder Julie Lindsay.
The Story Prize is still accepting entries of story collections published during the second half of 2011. Submissions must be made by November 15.
Finalists will be announced in January, and the winner announcement will follow an evening of readings and interviews with the finalists in New York City on March 21.
