Man Versus Machine
Write a story in which the central relationship is between a human and a machine. The machine can be a common household item, such as a toaster, or something imagined and altogether more sinister.
Genre: Fiction
After the Book Party: Three Paths From Publication
Three authors who followed very different paths to publication in 2011 speak about what they learned after their books were published, including hard lessons about publicity and reviews, readings and events, and advertising and sales.
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Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the innovative and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features Stoneslide Books, a recently launched fiction press looking for narratives that prompt readers “to think, to ask questions, to move the mind forward.”
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Peter Heller on Momentum
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The author of the debut novel The Dog Stars, forthcoming in August from Knopf, talks about Graham Greene's practice of writing exactly five hundred words a day, every day, and the importance of momentum in the writing process.
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The Green Shore
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Natalie Bakopoulos, who was interviewed by Charles Baxter for this issue's roundup of debut fiction writers, talks about her Greek roots and her first novel, The Green Shore, published by Simon & Schuster this month.
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I'm Reading a Book
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We thought we'd inject a little energy into our Wednesday with this music video by Julian Smith. Don't you ever interrupt me when I'm reading a book!
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A Room of One’s Own
Founded in 1975, A Room of One’s Own is a feminist bookstore in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. The store specializes in women’s literature and offers a wide selection of fiction, nonfiction, periodicals, music, posters, and T-shirts for and by women. A Room of One’s Own also maintains a non-sexist children's section and stocks up-to-date titles in lesbian and gay studies, bisexual and transgender books, gender studies, as well as lesbian and gay male fiction. The store hosts several author events throughout the year.
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We the People
Writing fiction in the first-person plural is notoriously tricky. Challenge yourself to write a short story—or a section of a short story—from the first-person plural. Read Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” for insight on how a collective narrator can enhance a story and/or produce unexpected effects.
ALA Gives First Awards for Adult Literature
The American Library Association awarded its inaugural Andrew Carnegie Awards for Excellence in Literature at a ceremony last night in Anaheim, California.
The organization that has for decades awarded the Caldecott and Newbery medals for children's and young adult literature is honoring for the first time books of fiction and nonfiction for adult readers.
Irish author and Man Booker alumna Anne Enright took the Carnegie Award in fiction for her fifth novel, The Forgotten Waltz, published in the United States by Norton. Also shortlisted were Russell Banks for his twelfth novel, Lost Memory of Skin (Ecco), and Pulitzer finalist Karen Russell for her first, Swamplandia! (Knopf).
In nonfiction, Robert K. Massie's biography Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Random House) won the Carnegie Award. The late Manning Marable's much-lauded biography Malcolm X (Viking) and James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon) were also finalists.
Each winner, selected by a committee chaired by librarian Nancy Pearl, received five thousand dollars, and each finalist received fifteen hundred dollars. As with the Caldecott and Newbery medals, copies of the honored books will also be decorated with a seal announcing the award.
Debut Novelist Wins Major Australian Award
Australia's prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award went this year to debut novelist Anna Funder for her best-seller All That I Am (Harper). Funder, whose novel of the Nazi resistance in Europe also won her country's Independent Bookseller’s Award for debut fiction and was named Indie Book of the Year, received $50,000 Australian (approximately $50,355).
Funder is also the author of the Samuel Johnson Prize–winning nonfiction book Stasiland: True Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall, published by Granta Books in 2003, which the author wrote after making a shift from previous careers in international law and television production in Germany. Her award-winning debut novel also carries threads of the real, particularly stories of pre-World War II activists who opposed Hitler's rise to power, some culled from the author's personal relationship with a German refugee living in Australia.
The other contenders for this year's Miles Franklin Award are Blood by Tony Birch, Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears, Cold Light by Frank Moorhouse, and Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett. The award is given annually for a novel that "presents Australian life in any of its phases."
In the video below, Funder describes the challenges of shaping her novel, including the importance, while crafting fiction from historical events, of getting the story "morally right."
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