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The master of the short story, whose first collection in six years, Tenth of December, was published in January by Random House, reads from his new book and talks about his writing process in this recent installment of the Talks at Google series.
Take a draft of one of your stories and cut it up into sections no longer than three to four paragraphs each. Reorder these sections and revise the story accordingly, writing transitions and discovering connections that lead to a new cohesive structure.
The third installment of Akashic's Drug Chronicles series, The Heroin Chronicles, edited by Jerry Stahl, includes stories by Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch, Nathan Larson, Ava Stander, and many others. In this video from Open Road Media, Stahl talks about William Burroughs, the difference between an alcoholic and a junkie, and how he selected the pieces for the anthology.
The Northern Colorado Writers (NCW) short fiction contest, which offers a grand prize of one thousand dollars and publication in the NCW anthology, is given annually for a short story. The deadline is March 31.
Fiction writers may submit a story of up to five thousand words, along with a twenty-dollar entry fee, via e-mail. Writers need not be NCW members or Colorado residents to enter.
Novelist and short story writer Alyson Hagy, whose most recent novel, Boleto, was published by Graywolf last year, will judge. A second-place prize of two hundred and fifty dollars and a third-place prize of one hundred dollars are also given. Winners, honorable mentions, and editor’s picks will be published in Pooled Ink, NCW’s annual anthology, which this year will be released in December.
Established in 2006 by freelance writer Kerrie Flanagan, the Fort Collins–based Northern Colorado Writers was founded in order to “encourage and support writers of all levels and genres.” The organization hosts an annual writers conference—including workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, as well as round-tables with editors and agents—which will be held on April 26 and 27 at the Fort Collins Hilton. NCW also sponsors a creative nonfiction contest (which accepts submissions from April 1 through June 30) and a poetry contest (which accepts submissions from July 1 through September 30).
Visit the NCW website for complete contest guidelines.
The author (and, yes, son of Stephen King) talks about the process of writing his first novel, Double Feature (Scribner, 2013), about a young man coming to terms with his life in the process and aftermath of making his first film. King's first book, We’re All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, was published by Bloomsbury in 2005.
Last week, during a ceremony at the British Library in London, the Folio Society announced the launch of a new literature prize worth forty thousand pounds, or roughly sixty thousand dollars.
The Folio Prize will be given annually for books of literary fiction, regardless of form or genre, written in English by an author from any country and published in the United Kingdom during the previous calendar year. The inaugural prize will be awarded in 2014.
Led by prize cofounder Andrew Kidd, a literary agent and former publisher of Picador/Macmillan, the advisory committee gathered over a hundred authors, editors, and critics from around the world to form the Folio Academy, from which a panel of five judges will be selected each year. The Folio Society—a London–based publisher that reissues classic works of literature in illustrated special editions—was announced as the prize’s sponsor earlier this year.
Academy members include Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee; Booker Prize recipients Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje, and Salman Rushdie; critics Geoff Dyer and Elif Batuman; Granta editor John Freeman, n+1 editor Keith Gessen, and New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman; American authors Michael Chabon, Michael Cunningham, Bret Easton Ellis, Junot Díaz, Ben Lerner, Richard Powers, Alice Sebold, and Maria Semple; and international writers Nam Le, China Mieville, David Mitchell, Philip Pullman, Zadie Smith, Miguel Syjuco, Colm Toibin, and Jeanette Winterson.
The panel of judges will consider eighty books each year for the prize. The Academy will nominate sixty titles (each member is encouraged to nominate up to three titles per year); publishers will also be invited to nominate titles, from which twenty additional finalists will be chosen. The panel will select a shortlist of eight books, and the final winner will be announced in the spring. The judges for the first Folio Prize will be announced this summer, and the inaugural winner will be announced in March 2014.
To watch a video from the launch and for more information, visit the Folio Prize website.
The acclaimed Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe died earlier today at the age of eighty-two. A statement released on behalf of his family described the author as one of the great literary voices of his time, whose wisdom was an inspiration to all who knew him. The Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan said Professor Achebe would live forever in the hearts and minds of present and future generations. BBC’s Bilkisu discusses his legacy with Stephen Sackur.
From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus to Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, there is a long tradition of fiction about monsters. Write a story of your own in which a monster is the main character. The monster could be based on another monster from literature or popular culture or it could be one from your imagination.
Torrene Boone talks with the Nobel Prize winner whose latest novel, Home, was published last year by Knopf (the paperback was published by Vintage International in January), at the New York City offices of Google.
Award-winning novelist, essayist, lyricist, and screenwriter Nick Hornby visits Columbia University’s Heyman Center to talk with poet and Barnard professor Saskia Hamilton.
