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If this simple, evocative video shot at Shakespeare and Company in Paris and set to Melody Gardot's "Over the Rainbow" doesn't give you an almost irresistable urge to visit an independent bookstore today, you've probably been buying all your books online.
Kicking off the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this past weekend, a collection of standout books published last year were honored at the thirty-second annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.
In poetry Carl Phillips won for his eleventh collection, Double Shadow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). The book was a contender last year for the National Book Award, along with another Times Book Prize finalist, Bruce Smith for Devotions (University of Chicago Press). Also shortlisted for the Times honor were Jim Harrison for Songs of Unreason (Copper Canyon Press), Dawn Lundy Martin for Discipline (Nightboat Books), and Linda Norton for The Public Gardens (Pressed Wafer).
Alex Shakar won in fiction for Luminarium (Soho Press), his second novel after 2001's The Savage Girl (Harper). The finalists were Joseph O’Connor for Ghost Light (Frances Coady Books) and Michael Ondaatje for The Cat’s Table (Knopf), as well as National Book Award finalists Julie Otsuka for The Buddha in the Attic (Knopf) and Edith Pearlman for Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories (Lookout Books), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction went to Ismet Prcic for Shards (Black Cat). Prcic's novel won out over Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding (Little, Brown), Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints (Ecco), Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station (Coffee House Press), and James Wallenstein's The Arriviste (Milkweed Editions).
The winner of the third annual prize in the graphic novel is Carla Speed McNeil for Finder: Voice (Dark Horse). Previous winners in the category include Adam Hines for Duncan the Wonder Dog (AdHouse, 2010) and David Mazzucchelli for Asterios Polyp (Pantheon, 2009).
The book prizes honor titles published in the previous year in twelve categories. For a list of all the winners, visit the award website.
Choose a well-known person from history or from the news. Write a persona poem from this person's voice and perspective. For an example, read the poet Ai's "The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981," from her collection Sin (Norton, 1986), written from the perspective of convicted murderer Wayne Williams, or watch a video of Ai reading the poem.
Linda Källérus directed this video for the poem "Waltz of a Dream," from Nathalie Handal's latest collection Poet in Andalucia, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in January. The music is from "Take This Waltz" by Leonard Cohen.
P&W–supported poet and playwright Robert Francis Flor, graduate of the the Artist Trust EDGE Writers Development Program and former board member of ArtsWest Theater, blogs about making connections with other writers.
My favorite part of a reading is the Q&A. At a reading I recently attended, a young man raised his hand and posed a question to Rick Barot, one of the poetry panelists. He asked what a career as a poet was like, as he was interested in pursuing the writing life. Rick is a highly respected poet and has authored two collections, The Darker Fall and Want. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and a teacher at both Warren Wilson College and Pacific Lutheran University, I knew Rick's answer would be meaningful. As it turned out, he had so much to share he conversed with this young man after the program.
This month, Voices of the Asian American Experience from the University of Santa Cruz included twelve poems about my Alaska cannery experiences, and The Thymos Book Project out of Portland, Oregon, will include three of my poems. In addition, Pinoy Heroes, a vignette about my father and uncles, will soon be published. On April 18, I read the vignette for first time at Seattle University. I hope that if I am asked about writing careers, I’ll be able to offer the same level of sage advice to students as Rick.
Advances in technology makes it easier than ever to make connections with other writers. Through these bridges, I hope to help foster a new generation of poets and writers... something I’ve always thought was incredibly important.
Photo: Robert Francis Flor.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in Seattle is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Jean Grau, author of the poetry collection Riverbend, is a storyteller in poetry and prose. A native of New Orleans, P&W has co-sponsored her readings at local nursing homes and public libraries since 2008. We asked her a few questions about her work with seniors. 
Why have you chosen to work with seniors?
My parents respected life in all its stages. I do, too. Seniors are special to me because of their experience, strength, and courage.
What are your reading dos and don’ts?
Wear bright, happy clothes. Make sure those with hearing problems are in the front. Move. Enjoy the poetry, along with the audience. Never forget readings are command performances for very special people. I avoid depressing subjects, except for the adventurous group at The Shepherd Center, whose motto is: "Bring it on. We can handle it."
How do you and your audience benefit from the live reading experience?
I benefit by feeling useful and helpful. They receive mental and emotional stimulation. Even the very sick enjoy the rhythm and soothing properties of poetry.
What are some of the most memorable moments in your work with seniors?
My second book is based on exhibits traveling to the New Orleans Museum of Art, including one that featured Fabergé eggs. On a beautiful spring day at the nursing home St. Anna's Residence, a small group had assembled in the front yard to hear me read these poems. As the activity director began to pass around foot-high color photos of the Fabergé eggs, loud “oohs” and “ahs” began. Attendants who had chosen not to attend the reading came running out, pushing their charges. There was such a commotion. Some workmen "discovered" they had to walk slowly by.
At another event, there was a paralyzed gentleman in intensive care. His head was in a brace, but his eyes were bright and alert as he listened intently. At the end of my presentation, he said in a clear, gallant voice: "Thank you for a great, an animated, flawless performance." He made me feel as though I were on the stage at Lincoln Center taking my bows.
What do you consider to be the value of literary programs for your community?
Everyone needs beauty. So many people tell me that in grade school they enjoyed poetry, but in high school they stopped. Readings reintroduce people to the intellectual stimulation, the emotional comfort, and the rhythm and music of poetry.
Photo: Jean Grau. Credit: Patricia Senentz.
Support for Readings/Workshops events in New Orleans is provided by an endowment established with generous contributions from the Poets & Writers Board of Directors and others. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.
Commissioned by America: Now and Here, an organization founded by Eric Fischl to promote conversation about contemporary America through the arts, the forty-five-minute film "Crossing State Lines: An American Renga" is based on the book of the same name, curated by Bob Holman and Carol Muske-Dukes and published by FSG last April, that features fifty-four poets from across the country in conversation.
In the latest installment of his hilarious Failed Writer Series, Yuvi Zalkow applies to writing a concept he (thinks he) learned from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: It takes approximately ten thousand hours to master a particular craft. "Just focus on getting stuff written," he concludes, "and maybe not as much about achieving fame and fortune."
To accompany our May/June 2012 issue's feature "Winners on Winning," part of our special section on writing contests, we'll be posting a selection of mini-interviews with prize recipients on the benefits of their awards and what they learned from winning.
First up, we speak with poet and creative nonfiction writer Danielle Cadena Deulen, whose essay collection, The Riots, was published in 2011 by University of Georgia Press as part of the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction. The book went on to win another award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, which offers winners a paid reading tour of several colleges. Her debut on the literary scene, the poetry collection Lovely Asunder, which she'd shopped for five years, was also released in 2011 as part of a prize—the Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize from University of Arkansas Press. Deulen discusses how her two awards in different genres gave her an edge in the job market and offers strategies for polishing a contest manuscript.
How did winning your latest honor, the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction, change your career?
I believe The Riots was pivotal in helping me to gain my position as an assistant professor in the doctoral creative writing program at the University of Cincinnati. Obviously, publications enable one to establish themselves in tenure track positions in academia—there’s nothing unusual about that. However, I applied and was hired as a poet. My first book, Lovely Asunder, was published in the same year just a few months earlier, and landed me an interview for the position. During the interview process, The Riots was published, and as it turns out, the faculty member that had taught creative nonfiction in the program at UC had recently left for a position elsewhere, so they needed someone who might be able to teach creative nonfiction as well. This meant I had something extra to offer the department—important in such a tough job market! A more subtle benefit of winning the prize is that my work seems to have caught the attention of a few agents and editors at literary magazines I admire who’ve queried me for new essays.
Did the award have an effect on any decisions you made as a writer, on the path you chose to take in life or in your work?
Both prizes are recent, so it is still unforeseen how they might affect my future writing. However, in the responses I’ve received about The Riots, specifically, I have come to realize that there is a desire for innovative creative nonfiction. When I wrote The Riots I wasn’t thinking much about the audience for such a book and structured it in a way I found interesting—that is, I was working in forms that, at times, thwarted traditional ideas of prose, though were very familiar to me as a poet. As it turns out, other people found this interesting as well. As I move forward into new projects, in poetry as well as creative nonfiction, I will be thinking more actively about innovation: how structure might augment or illuminate my subjects.
What advice do you have for writers looking to contests as a way to get their work into the world?
This only applies to a manuscript that can be arranged in a variety of ways (poetry, essay, short fiction), but when submitting to contests, I believe it’s important to arrange your manuscript for a contest, not necessarily for the most artful arrangement. You have to keep two people in mind when arranging a manuscript for a contest: the contest judge and the contest screener. Be sure to research who the judge is for the contest you’re sending and read some of her work to determine if she might be aligned with what you’re attempting in your manuscript. If you decide that the judge might be a good reader for your work, go on to worry about the screener. The screener, who is likely a writer herself, will probably be reading your manuscript on a day that otherwise would have been a vacation from work and has a huge box of manuscripts beside her which she must get through relatively quickly in order to send something to the judge. This means your poor screener probably doesn’t have the time or energy to pour over your work; you must impress her immediately with something stylish and interesting. For this reason, you should place your best piece first, offer her variety (in tone, form, or subject matter) throughout the manuscript to keep her reading, and be sure to end the manuscript with a strong piece as well. Then, cross your fingers, hold your breath, and keep in mind that dumb luck also plays a large part in this process. Be patient with yourself.
In the video below, Deulen discusses the variations in her approach to writing poems and prose.
This video by Gavin Edwards is one of the entries in an international competition, sponsored by The Literary Platform, for the best animation of a 1993 audio recording of the late British author Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) predicting the invention of the e-book.
