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Another fabricated memoir; Turkish writer Elif Safak is accused of plagiarizing the fiction of Zadie Smith; new poet laureate Philip Levine's book sales have skyrocketed; and other news.
In this 1977 experimental film by Larry Jordan, Orson Welles reads Coleridge's classic poem.
The winners of this year's Poetry Society of America (PSA) Chapbook Fellowships were announced this week, with two out of the four winning poets having honed their craft with Asian American poetry collective Kundiman. The two New York Fellowships, given to writers under thirty who live in the five boroughs of New York City and have not published a book, were awarded to Alison Roh Park for What We Push Against, selected by Joy Harjo, and Angela Veronica Wong for Dear Johnny, In Your Last Letter, selected by Bob Hicok.
When the announcement of the winners was made, according to Kundiman cofounder and poet Joseph O. Legaspi, the joy was palpable on the Kundiman listserv, populated by student writers, known as "fellows," and mentors who have served on the faculty of the organization's annual summer retreat. "Both winners accepted the accolades with sincere appreciation and their usual grace," Legaspi says. "They also expressed that they are carrying on the torch ignited by Hossannah Asuncion, another Kundiman fellow, who won a 2010 PSA National Chapbook Fellowship for Fragments of Loss. I love how this chosen family empowers each other."
"Over the years Kundiman has built a strong community of Asian American poets," Legaspi adds. "As for the winners, they are aesthetically very different, but they comprise the complexities of voices of the Asian American diaspora. Ultimately, the PSA Chapbook Fellowships help create a wider audience for Asian American poetry."
The national awards, which are awarded to writers of any age and from anywhere in the country who have not had a book published, went to E. J. García of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for Your bright hand, selected by Gerald Stern, and Marni Ludwig of Saint Louis for Little Box of Cotton and Lightning, selected by Susan Howe. The four winners, all of whom are women poets, will see their chapbooks published next year and will each receive one thousand dollars.
In the video below, Wong reads at a Lantern Review event held in conjunction with this year's Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference.
"O the horror of it all," Gorey writes in a February 1969 letter to Neumeyer. "I'm so distracted from?/by? drawing that I just can't cope with anything else for the present, however long that is."
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Even the envelopes Gorey sent to Neumeyer were often illustrated and addressed with calligraphic flair.
"Yet another infant carried off—how sad," Gorey wrote of the scene on this envelope. "The altitude is in process of turning it blue with cold. It has reached the lavender stage apparently."
“I wrote to Edward Gorey that Helen had found his envelope illustration of the blue infant sad," Neumeyer says of his wife's reaction to the previous image. "We soon received another, wherein the baby triumphs.”
If you are interested in literary translation there are, in the United States at this time, only three MFA programs in literary translation. Only two of these are linked to creative writing programs. The Queens College MFA program in literary translation is one of those two. Even if I had not been a New Yorker, I would have given Queens College very serious consideration.
Gorey is known for his creature creations, wrought with slyly dark humor. In his own life, he had great respect for the tiny lives that inspired his drawings—in fact, he dedicated his estate to the benefit of animals, "not only cats, dogs, whales, and birds, but also bats, insects, and invertebrates."
