Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Poems, Stories, Entire Books Welcome in Winter Anthology Contest

The Winter Anthology, a "collection of contemporary literature informed by history and older art, twenty-first-century science and philosophy, and the ending of print culture," is accepting entries for its 2011 contest.

All submissions will be considered for publication online and subsequently in Volume 2 of the anthology, alongside the poetry or prose of the winning writer, who will be awarded one thousand dollars.

This year's judge is poet Lisa Russ Spaar, a professor at University of Virginia whose poetry books include Glass Town (Red Hen Press, 1999), Blue Venus (Persea Books, 2004), Satin Cash (Persea Books, 2008), and the forthcoming Vanitas, Rough, which Persea will release next year. Spaar has also published essays in Shenandoah and Virginia Quarterly Review, and her poetry appeared in Volume 1 of the Winter Anthology, with poems by Lucie Brock-Broido, Jean Valentine, and Charles Wright and novel excerpts by Karl Ove Knausgaard and Magdalena Tulli.

Works of any genre are eligible for the contest. Each entry, which may range from two poems or a single essay or story to an entire book of up to fifty pages, must be accompanied by a ten dollar reading fee.

The address for print submissions and a link to the Winter Anthology's Submishmash entry page (which requires writers to submit an eleven dollar entry fee) are posted on the contest website. Entries must be submitted by November 15, and a winner will be announced in the winter.

Novel of Korean War, Memoir by Former Prisoner Win Literary Peace Prize

The sixth annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize, recognizing "the power of the written word to promote peace," was awarded yesterday to novelist Chang-Rae Lee and journalist-cum-memoirist Wilbert Rideau. Lee received the ten-thousand-dollar award for his fourth novel, The Surrendered (Riverhead Books), and Rideau won for his memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (Knopf).

Lee's novel unfolds during the Korean War, examining the repercussions of violence in the decades that follow the event. "This is a big novel which steadily transcends any thematic constraints and steps into real art," says fiction judge Ron Carlson, adding, "the dimensions of the book insist on a gritty and complex understanding of our best impulses in the worst of times."

Nonfiction judge Eric Bates says of Rideau's book, completed after the author spent forty-four years incarcerated in Louisiana prisons, "For his reporting alone, Rideau has made a critical and lasting contribution to our understanding of a prison system that long ago gave up on the notion of rehabilitation. But his memoir goes far beyond the limitations of journalism. He brings to his story a deep devotion to the power of literature, drawing on traditions as diverse as Saint Augustine and Frederick Douglass to craft a dramatic and moving tale that is both deeply felt and richly observed."

The winners will be presented their awards at a ceremony on November 13 in Dayton, Ohio, the seat of the historic Dayton Peace Accords, initialed there in November 1995.

In the video below, Lee discusses his winning book with Leonard Lopate of New York City public radio station WNYC.

Cameron's Books

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"I think the funnest part of running a bookstore is treasure hunting...going through those boxes and coming up with hidden treasures," says Jeffrey Frase, owner of Cameron's Books, the second-oldest used-book store in Portland, Oregon. "It's just like being a kid again." Directors Jin Ryu and Yi-Fan Lu spent two months getting to know Frase before asking if they could film this five-minute documentary.

What's Your Type?

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Editors, designers, and other members of the Penguin team talk about their favorite fonts in this promotional video for Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield, published this month by Penguin imprint Gotham Books. Times New Roman, Comic Sans, Helvetica, Garamond? What does your favorite font say about you?

Rin Tin Tin

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Next week Simon & Schuster will publish Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend by Susan Orlean, the long-time staff writer at the New Yorker and author of seven books, including Saturday Night and The Orchid Thief. In her new book Orlean chronicles the life of the dog that was born on a battlefield in France in 1918 and became a movie star and international icon.

The Day of the Locust

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In November OR Books will publish Alive Inside the Wreck: A Biography of Nathanael West by Joe Woodward, a frequent contributor to the magazine who wrote "The Art of Reading Nathanael West: Simple Was His Pilgrimage and Brief" for the May/June 2007 issue. This is a clip from John Schlesinger's 1975 film adaptation of West's novel The Day of the Locust, starring Donald Sutherland, Karen Black, William Atherton, Burgess Meredith, and Geraldine Page.

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