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The new Dostoyevsky metro station in Moscow might be a little grim; the Eat, Pray, Love film adaptation is due in August with a host of product tie-ins; Apple sells its three millionth iPad; Andrew Phillips is named president of Penguin International; and other news.
Literary agent Bill Clegg of William Morris Endeavor who represents authors such as Rivka Galchen, Shane Jones, Daniyal Mueenuddin, and Salvatore Scibona—and even a few poets, including Mary Jo Bang, Mark Doty, and Rebecca Wolff—made publishing headlines this month, not for a recent sale, but for debuting as an author.
On June 9, Little, Brown released Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man, a memoir about his years in the early aughts when he suddenly disappeared from agenting after succumbing to a private battle with crack addition. After recovering, Clegg was hired by the William Morris agency, and his book was sold for a reported $350,000 advance to legendary editor Pat Strachan whose books include those by Joseph Brodsky, Lydia Davis, Marilynne Robinson, and Tom Wolfe. An excerpt of Clegg’s debut was published in New York Magazine’s May 23, 2010, issue. Listen to a sample audio clip of Portrait of the Addict as a Young Man read by the author.
John Updike's typwriter is up for auction; a price war heats up in the e-reader market; Publishers Weekly ranks the world's biggest publishers; after six years the Google Books settlement still has no end in sight; and other news.
Two award announcements arrived recently with news that they would be the last for the respective prizes. Earlier this month Washington and Lee University's literary journal, Shenandoah, named Robin Ekiss, author of Mansion of Happiness (University of Georgia Press), winner of its Glasgow Prize for a debut poetry collection. However, due to budget cuts, the two-thousand-dollar award, which has been given since 2001, has been discontinued.
Quercus Review Press, which awarded its latest Poetry Series Book Award to Orlando poet Terry Godbey for her manuscript "Beauty Lessons," has also announced the suspension of its prize. The entire press, based at Modesto Junior College in California, is going on hiatus—a casualty of state budget cuts in the arts, according to editor Sam Pierstorff. The press will publish Godbey's collection, the seventh book in its award series, in the fall and will award her one thousand dollars along with fifty copies of her book.
In the video below, Ekiss reads the poem "The Opposite of the Body" from her winning collection.
The Salinger estate attempts to fend off Hollywood; Geoffrey Hill wins the Oxford post in a landslide; the childhood home of Stanley Kunitz is made a Literary Landmark; the New York Times takes a sneak peek into John Updike's archives; and other news.
Nick Hornby helps Ben Folds make literary music; another "20 Under 40" list emerges, from Britain; a group of prominent African authors head to the continent to cover their experiences during the World Cup; a novelist with his pen on the pulse of pop culture designs a clothing line; and other news.
The results of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award competition, sponsored by the libraries of Dublin, were announced today.
From a shortlist that included Marilynne Robinson and Joseph O'Neill, Gerbrand Bakker of the Netherlands was selected as winner of the one-hundred-thousand-euro prize (approximately $124,000), of which a quarter will go to his translator, David Colmer, for The Twin (Harvill Secker).
The judges, Anne Fine, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Eve Patten, Abdourahman Waberi, and Zoë Wicomb, praised the "sparely written" novel for its narrator's "odd small cruelties, laconic humor and surprising tendernesses." The book is available in the United States from the small press Archipelago Books.
"It's wonderful," Bakker said after hearing news of the prize, the Guardian reported. "But for me it was also wonderful to read the book in English— I said to David, the translator, 'Who wrote this book?' I didn't recognize it; I thought it was very good. It made me realize it really is a book, and I am a writer."
Bakker, also a licensed gardener, reportedly has plans to buy a horse with his winnings. "In Holland we've got these huge grey horses that are very sweet and I would like to own one," he said. "I'm not a rider but I just love these big beasts. They're so kind. You
can lie on top of them every day for ten minutes, not ride them—and then feed them a carrot or ten."
[Correction: Gerbrand Bakker's country of residence was incorrectly stated in the original blog post. Bakker is a resident of the Netherlands.]
Austria strikes a digitization deal with Google; Stieg Larsson's longtime companion refuses a settlement from the author's family; New York library users stage a read-in; the twentieth annual International Poetry Festival of Medellin kicks off next month in Columbia; and other news.
In recognition of Bloomsday and the author that inspired it, we're taking a look at a contest out of James Joyce's native Ireland that's seeking stories (though Joyce's Ulysses, celebrated all over the Western world today, is a far cry from the short form). The Munster Literature Centre, located in Joyce's ancestral hometown of Cork, is accepting entries for its eighth annual Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition until July 31.
The winning story writer will receive fifteen hundred euros (approximately $1,850) and publication in the Centre's journal, Southword, as well as an invitation to read at the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Festival in Cork this September. Writers of any nationality working in English are welcome to submit—while the majority of past prize recipients hail from Ireland, the two most recent winners are U.S. residents.
The contest is named for Seán Ó Faoláin (1900–1991), an Irish writer and admirer of Joyce known for his short stories, included in collections such as The Man Who Invented Sin (1949), A Purse of Coppers (1937), and Midsummer Night Madness (1932). Tania Hershman, author of The White Road and Other Stories (Salt Publishing, 2008), will judge.
In other award news from the Emerald Isle, the winner of the one-hundred-thousand-euro International IMPAC Dublin Literature Award will be announced tomorrow. The shortlist, which will be narrowed down by judges Anne Fine, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Eve Patten, Abdourahman Waberi, and Zoë Wicomb, includes American Marilynne Robinson for her novel Home (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
The other shortlisted authors, all with books published in 2008, are:
Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker for The Twin (Harvill Secker)
Muriel Barbery of France for The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa Editions)
Robert Edric of Great Britain for In Zodiac Light (Doubleday)
German author Christoph Hein for Settlement (Metropolitan Books)
Zoë Heller of Great Britain for The Believers (Fig Tree)
Irish Author Joseph O’Neill for Netherland (Pantheon Books)
Ross Raisin of Great Britain for God’s Own Country (Viking)
Happy Bloomsday, and stay tuned for the IMPAC prize results. In the meantime, check out the video below, by Jim Clark, of an animated Joyce reading from Episode Seven of Ulysses.
