For his story collection The Hive and the Honey, Paul Yoon was named this year’s winner of the Story Prize; the annual award for a book of U.S. fiction celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.
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The Washington Post offers a history lesson on the Maryland-born poet who is the namesake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which collapsed after it was struck by a cargo ship yesterday. Best known for penning “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Key wrote other verse and—like so many lionized U.S. historical figures—held disturbing views that have spurred many to question why his name should be commemorated.
The winners of the 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards from the Cleveland Foundation have been announced: Ned Blackhawk in nonfiction for The Rediscovery of America, Teju Cole in fiction for Tremor, and Monica Youn in poetry for From From. Maxine Hong Kingston was awarded a lifetime achievement award.
Influential literary scholar Marjorie Perloff has died at age 92, reports the New York Times.
Publishing revenue ticked up modestly overall last year, though adult trade sales took a slight dip, reports Publishers Weekly. Digital audio sales, however, leapt upward in the adult segment by 16 percent.
Fashion brand Chanel recently hosted a “Literary Rendez-vous” in Paris with author Rachel Cusk, model Naomi Campbell, and Chanel ambassador Charlotte Casiraghi, reports RUSSH, an Australian fashion magazine. Chanel apparently has a “rich literary tradition”; its last Literary Rendez-vous featured author Jeanette Winterson, critic Erica Wagner, and Chanel ambassador and actress Kristen Stewart.
The Nation profiles author Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Publishers Weekly has named eight presses to its 2024 list of fast-growing independent publishers, including Mad Cave Studios in Miami, Florida; Microcosm Publishing in Portland, Oregon; and Forefront Books in Nashville.
For those who prefer boo-hoos to basketball, Electric Literature has launched March Sadness, a tournament of bleak books. Voting starts today on the literary website’s social media channels, where voters can weigh in on the biggest tearjerker: Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Justin Torres’s We the Animals, Hanya’s Yanagihara’s A Little Life, or some other tale of woe.
Philip Metres and Jessica Jacobs discuss their new poetry collections and the serendipity of their shared themes and book-cover imagery on Ideastream, a public broadcaster in Cleveland. Metres’s Fugitive/Refuge, forthcoming in April from Copper Canyon Press, and Jacobs’s Unalone, published by Four Way Books this month, have the same cover photograph and meditate on family history and faith.
Stephen King’s Carrie was first published a half century ago this year. In the New York Times Margaret Atwood reflects on the lure and importance of this horror classic.
In the Millions, Lauren Alwan offers praise for authors who take their sweet time: “I’m interested in how, in a world that values speed, the slow writer learns to tolerate the uncertainty that comes with the long project.”
PEN America has received a reply to its open letter published this week responding to authors who dropped out of this year’s PEN World Voices Festival in protest of the organization’s response to the war in Gaza, Literary Hub reports. The protesting authors are calling for “a thorough review and examination of the conduct and performance of PEN America with regard to the tragic consequences of the Israeli occupation that is currently playing out and has played out in Israel and Palestine for several decades.”
The winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced, including Safiya Sinclair in autobiography for How to Say Babylon, Lorrie Moore in fiction for I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home, and Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi, in poetry for Phantom Pain Wings.
PEN America has issued a letter responding to critics of the free-speech organization’s stance on the war in Gaza, calling for a cease-fire in the war, expanding support for Palestinian writers, and enacting other measures while defending its role in holding space for “sharply divergent views on questions of deep consequence. For some, referencing nuance is moral betrayal. For others, failure to do so is unconscionable. As an organization open to all writers, we see no alternative but to remain home to this diversity of opinions and perspectives, even if, for some, that very openness becomes reason to exit.”
Publicist Lena Little has launched her own firm, Lena K Little Public Relations, reports Publishers Weekly. Little has worked with Knopf, Pantheon, and Little, Brown and authors including Leslie Jamison, Chigozie Obioma, and Orhan Pamuk, among others.
The Washington Post profiles recent Cave Canem Prize winner Ajibola Tolase, whose debut poetry collection, 2,000 Blacks, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press this fall.
The Perelandra Bookshop in Fort Collins, Colorado, has launched a reader-in-residence program, reports the Colorado Sun. “The reader gets a small stipend for their three-month stint—$50 per month for books, and another $50 per month for coffee. They also have access to Perelandra’s wholesale book catalog. The overt goal of the residency is to foster a space for people to experience literature more thoughtfully.”
Dazed magazine interviews Patrick McGraw, the editor of Heavy Traffic, “a new space for instinctual, unbounded writing,” which has published experimental fiction by Sean Thor Conroe, Chris Kraus, and other authors alongside culture makers who are not known for their writing.
The Atlantic suggests some books that can help digitally overloaded readers learn to the appreciate the physical world.
Literary Events Calendar
- March 28, 2024
The Frick Collection Spring Book Club
Online4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EDT - March 30, 2024
Gentle Generative: Writing and the Natural World
Online10:30 AM - 1:30 PM EDT - March 30, 2024
Creative Writing Workshop – Fiction
Online1:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT
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