Siri Hustvedt
As part of the 2010 PEN World Voices Festival, novelist Siri Hustvedt, who is profiled in the current issue of the magazine, read an excerpt from The Summer Without Men, published this month by Picador.
U.S. Writer Wins Big Overseas for Detroit Story
The two-year-old Sunday Times Short Story Award, given by the U.K. weekend newspaper for a single story, goes this year to an American author. Anthony Doerr, who won the Story Prize in March for his second collection Memory Wall, took the thirty-thousand-pound prize (nearly fifty thousand dollars) for "The Deep," set in 1920s Detroit.
Doerr's story, set in 1920s Detroit, centers on a boy with a hole in his heart who lives among salt miners in a world that "continually drains itself of young men." It originally appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story's Fall 2010 issue.
Also honored are stories by Will Cohu ("East Coast—West Coast"), Roshi Fernando ("The Fluorescent Jacket"), Yiyun Li ("The Science of Flight"), Hilary Mantel ("Comma"), and Gerard Woodward ("The Family Whistle"). Each was given five hundred pounds (about eight hundred dollars).
Last year's inaugural Sunday Times Short Story Award winner was seventy-eight-year-old New Zealand author C. K. Stead, for his story "Last Season's Man." In order to be eligible, authors, regardless of nationality, must have had work previously published in the United Kingdom.
In the video below, actor Damian Lewis reads an excerpt from Doerr's winning piece.
Global Publishing Industry Worth $130 Billion, Autographing E-books, and More
Autographing e-books; an imprisoned Iranian writer wins the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award; global publishing is worth about $130 billion; Salman Rushdie's new gig; and other news.
Celebrating National Poetry Month
Sandra Beasley, author of the poetry collection I Was the Jukebox (W. W. Norton, 2010), offers a fortune-cookie guide to the ways of poetry.
The Writer's Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life
Suitable for both beginning and advanced writers of fiction and nonfiction, The Writer's Portable Mentor brings together 20 years of teaching and creative thought by author Priscilla Long. The book helps writers understand and incorporate the regular practices of virtuoso creators; provides a guide to structuring literary, journalistic, or fictional pieces or entire books; opens the door to the sentence strategies of the masters; provides tools for developing a poet's ear for use in prose; trains writers in the observation skills of visual artists; and guides them toward more effective approaches to getting their work into the world.
April 14
Choose a social-media Web site, and click on the profile of a person you don't know. Look at his photos, interests, and friends. Give this person a new name, and write a story about something you imagine happened to him ten years in the past, an event that altered the course of his life.
Brave New World Tops Banned Books List, National Library Week, and More
It's National Library Week; according to a new survey, 77 percent of Americans oppose censoring Mark Twain's famous novels; bitter Borders employees make hilarious signage; Brave New World tops the list of most challenged books in American libraries; and other news.
Iowa Writers' Workshop at 75
The Iowa Writers' Workshop, the nation's oldest postgraduate writing program, is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary this year. Jeffrey Brown delivered this recent report on PBS NewsHour.
Three American Women Shortlisted for IMPAC Prize
Among the ten finalists for the one-hundred-thousand-dollar International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award are three American writers, the same number that hail from the librarian-driven award's home country.
Barbara Kingsolver is shortlisted for her novel The Lacuna, Yiyun Li for The Vagrants, and Joyce Carol Oates for Little Bird of Heaven, all published in 2009.
Representing Ireland (with a touch of New York City) are the novels Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín, and Love and Summer by William Trevor. Also shortlisted are Michael Crummey of Canada for Galore and Australian writers David Malouf for Ransom, Craig Silvey for Jasper Jones, and Evie Wyld for After the Fire, a Still, Small Voice.
The titles were selected from a pool of 162 books nominated by librarians around the world, and for the first time since 2000, no translations appear on the shortlist (the Guardian's books blog probes the issue). The winner, selected by an international panel of writers, will be announced on June 15.
"Birds Attack Man on Bike"
Form Line of Battle! by Alexander Kent and Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick top this piece.
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