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The PEN World Voices Festival lineup is announced; World Book Night takes place in Trafalgar Square in London on March 4; the Tahrir Book Fair springs up in place of the canceled Cairo International Book Fair in Egypt; Libyan poet Khaled Mattawa talks about the ongoing demonstrations in his country; and other news.
Write a scene for a story, set in a kitchen, with two characters. One of the characters is keeping a secret from the other. (The secret can be as big as, "You're adopted" or as small as, "I forgot to pay the cable bill.") The character with the secret doesn't reveal it, but still the secret bears down on everything the characters say to each other, the way they touch or don't touch each other, the things and places they turn their eyes to. Let the secrets either emerge or disappear, depending on the way the story evolves.
This week's fiction prompt comes from novelist Lauren Grodstein, author most recently of A Friend of the Family (Algonquin Books, 2009).
Fiction writer and frequent Poets & Writers Magazine contributor Benjamin Percy recently spoke with interviewer Max Pearlstein about the importance of place in his novels and short stories, the MFA program at Iowa State University where he teaches, and his attempt, in everything he writes, to thrill his readers.
The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice will once again award ten-thousand-dollar grants to a poet and a fiction writer, but with a deadline falling a few months earlier than last year's. Entries for the 2011 awards, given to lesbian writers for work with lesbian content, will be due by the end of the business day on March 22.
Two finalists in each genre will receive one thousand dollars each and six honorable mentions will be awarded one hundred dollars each, with at least one of the grants given to a writer west of the Mississippi. A panel of distinguished lesbian writers, which has in the past been populated by writers such as Sharon Bridgforth, Staceyanne Chin, Kristen Hogan, Achy Obejas, and Pamela Sneed, will select the grantees.
For guidelines on what to submit and access to Astraea's online submission system (their preferred mode of entry), visit the foundation's Web site.
In the video below, 2010 poetry winner Lenelle Moïse reads a poem inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat over a montage of his paintings.
The wife of Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo continues to live in government-enforced isolation; Barnes & Noble posts a strong sales quarter; the Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year; Joan Didion cancels April appearance; and other news.
Lloyd Cole, the former lead singer of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, recently released the music video for his song "Writers Retreat!" from last year's solo album "Broken Record." Listen as Cole croons the following lyrics: "Who did you meet at the writers retreat? / Where did you sleep at the writers retreat? / What did you write at the writers retreat?"
Today is International Mother Language Day; digital books could spell the end of marginalia; a bookseller discovers new du Maurier stories; Patti Smith's memoir is up for another book award; and other news.
A Man Within, the documentary about Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs that premieres on the PBS series Independent Lens tonight, explores the late writer's fascination with, among many other things, guns. "Burroughs didn't feel at home unless he had a loaded gun by his side."
This clip is the prologue of an original Web series, produced by Awkward Moment Productions, about Richard Scribe, the CEO of an insurance company who reads poetry on the streets of Vancouver's financial district. The mockumentary is written and directed by Michael Grand and stars David Lewis, John Shaw, and Leo Wilson.
Write a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem made up, typically, of three stanzas of four lines, and a fourth of two lines, or a couplet. Use the following rhyme scheme: In each of the first three stanzas, rhyme the first and third lines and the second and fourth lines (a, b, a, b, c, d, c, d, e, f, e, f); and rhyme the lines of the couplet (g, g). For a traditional example, see Shakespeare's "From you have I been absent in the spring...." For a contemporary example, see Denis Johnson's "Heat."
