Tom Perrotta
Caption:
Novelist and screenwriter Tom Perrotta, author most recently of The Leftovers (St. Martin's Press, 2011), offers advice to writers and debunks the maxim of always writing what you know.
Genre:
Genre: Fiction
Barnes & Noble Announces Discover Award Finalists
Barnes and Noble has announced the shortlist for its 2012 Discover Great New Writers Awards, which annually honor works of fiction and nonfiction by emerging writers published during the previous calendar year and featured in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program. Of the six finalists, one winner in each genre will be receive $10,000.
The finalists in fiction are Amanda Coplin for The Orchardist (HarperCollins), Eowyn Ivey for The Snow Child (Reagan Arthur Books), and Karen Thompson Walker for The Age of Miracles (Random House). The finalists in nonfiction are Katherine Boo for Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Random House), Kristen Iversen for Full Body Burden (Crown Publishers), and Cheryl Strayed for Wild (Knopf).
Established in 1990, the Discover program highlights books by debut or early-career writers whose work might otherwise be overlooked by the mainstream. This year’s selections were chosen from a list of fifty-three writers.
A group of Barnes and Noble volunteers hand-picks Discover selections each year from a list of nominees, and a panel of judges in both genres selects the award finalists and winners. This year's fiction judges are Lan Samantha Chang, Alan Cheuse, and Karl Marlantes. The nonfiction judges are Susan Cheever, Wendy McClure, and Touré.
The winners will be announced on Wednesday, March 6. Second-place finalists will receive $5,000, and third-place finalists will receive $2,500.
The 2011 Discover Great New Writers Award winner in fiction was Scott O'Connor for Untouchable, published by Tyrus Books; Michael Levy won in nonfiction for Kosher Chinese, published by Holt.
Barnes and Noble accepts nominations for the Discover program four times yearly. For the Fall 2013 season, books published between August and October, 2013, may be submitted by April 4. Publishers may nominate books by debut authors or writers with fewer than three previously published books. Authors may not submit their own work. Works of literary fiction (including novels and short story collections) and literary nonfiction (including essay collections, memoirs, and other nonfiction works with a strong narrative) are eligible. Self-published or digital-only titles are not eligible. For more information and complete submission guidelines, visit the website.
Institute of American Indian Arts MFA in Creative Writing
MFA Program
Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Santa Fe, NM
Application Deadline:
Sun, 02/15/2026
Application Fee:
$25
Affiliated Publications/Publishers:
Black History Month
Caption:
Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, N. K. Jemisin, Virginia Hamilton, and David Halberstam discuss the legacy and contributions of African American writers to the Western canon in this video from Open Road Media.
Genre:
"Tributaries"
Caption:
In this animation for the free fiction magazine Recommended Reading, Myles David Jewell animates the following sentence from "Tributaries" by Ramona Ausubel: "Though the girls know many two-armers, even some that seem happy and in love, what they talk about are those with love-grown arms."
Genre:
Job Search
Write about a main character for a story, focusing on his or her occupation. Freewrite for five minutes about this character, considering the following: What is his or her job? How did the character get it? How long has he or she held it? What does he or she like and dislike about it? Set your freewriting aside, then research details about this occupation, taking notes along the way. What kind of language would a person with this job use? What kind of equipment? Where would the office be located? Who would be the boss? What would the job title be? Use your freewriting and your research to inform a story about this character.
Geoff Dyer
Caption:
Essayist and novelist Geoff Dyer delivered this talk, "The Novelistic Essay and the Essayistic Novel," at the 31st annual Key West Literary Seminar in Key West, Florida, earlier this month.
Genre:
Ishmael Reed
Caption:
"I'm not a linear thinker," says Ishmael Reed in this video from Open Road Media. "That's one of the reasons I'm able to make different associations that people wouldn't ordinarily make." The author of ten novels, including Mumbo Jumbo (1972), as well as plays, essays, and poems, Reed talks about his unique style of telling stories, which draw upon different languages, religions, and other cultural influences.
Genre:
Man Booker International Prize Announces Finalists
The finalists for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, which recognizes one fiction writer for a body of work, were announced today. Of the ten authors only three write in English, including American novelist Marilynne Robinson, who was first short-listed for the award in 2011. The winner, who will be announced in May, will receive sixty thousand British pounds.
Representing nine different countries, the finalists were annouced this morning at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The list includes U R Ananthamurthy of India, Aharon Appelfeld of Israel, Lydia Davis of the United States, Intizar Husain of Pakistan, Yan Lianke of China, Marie NDiaye of France, Josip Novakovich of Canada, Marilynne Robinson of the United States, Vladimir Sorokin of Russia, and Peter Stamm of Switzerland.
While many of this year's authors are relatively lesser known, Robinson, who teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is no stranger to literary prizes. Her debut novel, Housekeeping (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982) won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for best first novel and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; what is perhaps her most widely known novel, Gilead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and her most recent novel, Home, also published by FSG, received the 2009 Orange Prize.
The current panel of judges, which has grown in size from previous years, includes chairman Christopher Ricks, critic and translator Tim Parks, critic Elif Batuman, and novelists Aminatta Forna and Yiyun Li. On the Man Booker International website, prize administrator Fiammetta Rocco attributes the wide range of finalists to the expanded scope of judges, each who represents a different geographical focus. “Now that we have five judges, we have been able to read in far greater depth than ever before,” she says. “Fiction is now available in all sorts of forms and in translation in more countries. This list recognizes that and is the fruit of the judges' collective reading.”
The award is given every two years to a living author who has published original works of fiction in English, or whose books are widely available in translation. The finalists and winners are chosen solely by the judges; there is no application process.
Past winners of the prize include American novelist Philip Roth, Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, and Albanian author Ismail Kadare, who won the inaugural prize in 2005. The winner of the 2013 prize, who may also choose a translator of their work to be awarded fifteen thousand pounds, will be announced on May 22 in London.
Our Education
Caption:
In this animation for the free fiction magazine Recommended Reading, Grier Dill animates and scores the following sentence from "Our Education" by Lincoln Michel: "Did we as students, in our weakness, fabricate whole memories from these scattered, pointless items?"
Genre:
Pages
