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Amazon slashes the price of the Kindle DX; a Faulkner and Film conference takes place later this month in Mississippi; Canada's iBookstore opens on Canada Day; McDonald's teams up with the Detroit Public Library; and other news.
Earlier this week the Australian Publishers Association celebrated its favorite books of last year, with honorees including a pop rocker and a classical musician. The book award for a debut title went to pianist Anna Goldsworthy, who performs solo and in the Seraphim Trio, for her memoir, Piano Lessons (Black Inc.). Novelist and indie singer and songwriter Craig Silvey won both the Australian Book of the Year award and the prize in literary fiction for his second novel, Jasper Jones (Allen & Unwin).
Both books are available in the United States as e-book editions for Amazon's Kindle, and Goldsworthy's memoir is forthcoming in October from St. Martin's Press.
For the Book of the Year honor, Silvey's novel was up against Australian literary luminary David Malouf's novel Ransom (Random House Australia) and Peter Temple's literary crime novel Truth (Text Publishing), along with a biography of horse racing legend Bart Cummings and a history of Australia by Thomas Keneally.
Malouf's book also appeared with Silvey's on the shortlist for literary fiction, joining novels Dog Boy by Eva Hornung (Text Publishing), The World Beneath by Cate Kennedy (Scribe Publications), and Lovesong by Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin).
In debuts, the shortlist included the novels Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest (Random House Australia), Red Dust by Fleur McDonald (Allen & Unwin), and The Weight of Silence by Catherine Therese (Hachette Australia).
The video below is the trailer for Silvey's winning book, which has been compared to classic coming-of-age novels like To Kill a Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn.
A Walt Whitman "freak-out jam" takes place in Brooklyn, New York, tonight; W. S. Merwin is appointed U.S. poet laureate; Christopher Hitchens cancels his book tour to undergo cancer treatment; scientists name a prehistoric whale after Herman Melville; and other news.
In the fourth installment of our series Inside Indie Bookstores,
contributor Jeremiah Chamberlin travels to Milwaukee to talk with Daniel Goldin, owner of Boswell Book Company.
Apple’s entry into the e-book market has given publishers the leverage they needed to force a marketwide shift from a wholesale to an “agency” model of e-book retailing, but the long-term impact of the move—for both publishers and authors—remains unclear.
On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, several local and national arts organizations, including the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and the Poetry Society of America, are presenting readings in New Orleans to commemorate all that was lost—the lives, homes, businesses, and communities—and to celebrate a flourishing of the literary arts in the area since the storm.
The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative recently announced that this year’s mentor in literature, German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger, has chosen as his protégée American poet Tracy K. Smith. This is the fifth year a mentorship has been awarded to a writer, and the first time the winning writer has hailed from the United States.
The Federal Writers' Project was established seventy-five years ago, and according to one author and documentary filmmaker, it was a watershed event, if not a turning point, in the history of American literature. Employing up to 7,500 people annually during its four-year run, the Writers’ Project nurtured a generation of authors who otherwise might have been forced into nonliterary careers.
Google partners with indie booksellers; the grand-prize winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is announced; Muse Books in Florida celebrates thirty years; the rise of Dalit lit; and other news.
