Another response to The New Yorker‘s 20 under 40 list, this time from Dzanc Books. Dzanc polled “nearly 100 independent publishers, agents, editors, bloggers and reviewers” and went through two rounds of voting to come up with 20 Writers to Watch: An Alternate List.
20 Writers to Watch
the squid write the Wikipedia
Missed the LA Times Festival of Books this weekend? The paper has some great short pieces on the panels that took place, including this one on an event called “Whimsical Visions, ” in which rising star Etgar Keret imagined Wikipedia as written by future squids.
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The Author Is Not the Author
Recommended Reading: Albert Mobilio on Paul La Farge’s new novel, The Night Ocean.
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Creative Walking
Expert walker and poet Jon Cotner, coauthor of Ten Walks/Two Talks, will lead a set of excursions on NYC streets during the month of June. Walkers will be given two lines to repeat to strangers, in an attempt to break down social barriers: “Anonymity dissolves. Spontaneous societies arise.”
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“The kitchen was the scariest part of all, however!”
Rich Tommaso has penned an illustrated look at the Fantagraphics offices circa 1995.
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Linkage
The CS Monitor has a little piece about the travails of teenage novelists: “A youthful sensation doesn’t always translate into a distinguished literary career. For many teen authors, that first book proves a hard act to follow. Some never again meet with the kind of praise critics heaped upon their first offerings.”Speaking of (once) young phenoms, Bret Easton Ellis has a flashy new Web site that promotes his upcoming novel, Lunar Park. I’ve never read Ellis, but the Web site seems to indicate that this upcoming novel is about a character named Bret Easton Ellis, and it may or may not be autobiographical. Very meta. There’s an excerpt in there too.I’ve been enjoying EarthGoat lately. It’s a group blog out of Iowa City.
More on Maxwell’s
A few weeks ago, our own Nick Moran wrote about the closing of Maxwell’s, a Hoboken landmark that doubles as a restaurant and concert space. Now, at The Paris Review Daily, Josh Lieberman goes to the venue’s last Feelies concert, pointing out that “in no way is Maxwell’s an ideal place to see a show, except that it is.”
All in Our Heads
Ever since the advent of modern neuroscience, the language of the brain scientist has entered our common vocabulary. Words and phrases like “synapse,” “chemical imbalance” and “hardwired” point to its relevance in contemporary culture. At Page-Turner, a look at how cognitive language and our notion of attention affects the way we think about fiction and music, with particular reference to On Beauty by Zadie Smith and Orfeo by Richard Powers.
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Calling All Students!
Calling all undergrads and grad students! McSweeney’s is holding their first-ever Student Short Story Contest. The grand prize — $500 and publication in their 51st issue — will go to the student who sends in the best story before the last day of August. Get cracking, but don’t go beyond their 7,500-word limit.
I like this list, and yet find myself a little puzzled that Paul Harding didn’t make the final cut. If winning a Pulitzer for your debut novel doesn’t make you a writer to watch, what does?
Biased list. A lot of those writers are published by Dzanc (which the writer of selfsame is associated with).
Several have commented on the lack of diversity in the Dzanc list. The New Yorker list was much more diverse. Could someone tell me if all 20 writers on Dzanc’s list are indeed white? If not, who’s not? Thanks.
Jonathan – Their methodology seems sound, but I find myself wondering if the decision to include agents in the voting could have weighted the list in favor of Dzanc. They reached out to people they know in the industry, and if you’re a publisher, it stands to reason that many of the agents you know are going to be the ones you’ve worked with; in this case, agents who’ve placed writers with Dzanc. But that said, the only writer I’ve actually read on that list is Laura van den Berg, who’s possibly the best short story writer I’ve ever read, so I’ll stop well short of arguing that any Dzanc writers shouldn’t be there.
Not Sure —
They are all white. This is unlike The Millions’ alternate list of 20 Under 40 and The New Yorker list. In addition to the racial and ethnic diversity of The New Yorker, 7 of their 20 are from other countries: Nigeria (Adichie), Peru (Alarcón), Latvia (Bezmozgis), China (Li), Ethiopia (Mengestu), Yugoslavia (Obreht), and Russia (Shteyngart) And native born African-Americans like Packer and Adrian, Hispanics like Alarcon, and Asian-Americans like Bynum.
The Dzanc 20 is less diverse than any Republican president’s cabinet.
If they’re going to concentrate on indie presses, how could they omit Tao Lin? He’s more an indie press “writer to watch” than anyone on their list. But, oh, he ain’t white.
It’s probably worth bearing in mind that the parameters of the Dzanc list are different from the parameters of the New Yorker list. Dzanc focused solely on North American writers.
Given that non-white authors were recognized in early rounds of voting, the suggestion that Tao Lin didn’t appear on the list because he isn’t white is startling to me.
I used to admire Dzanc, but I lost all respect for them after I read this list. Almost all of these writers are either published by Dzanc or close personal friends of the publishers of Dzanc.I have always respected the way Dzanc has done everything they could to promote their writers and friends, and independent publishing in general, but this is going too far. How can you accuse the New Yorker for being exclusive, and then publish an “alternative” list of all of your friends?