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
Lost Irish Film Recovered
During the production of his classic film, Man of Aran, Robert Flaherty also directed an 11-minute short entitled Oidhche Sheanchais (“A Night of Storytelling”). It’s widely considered to be the first film recorded in the Irish language. For years, all extant copies were believed to be lost in a fire, but recently, researchers at Harvard’s Houghton Library rediscovered a nitrate print of the film.
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Holy Order in Remote Places
The last book that Genevieve Hudson for The Rumpus loved was James Salter’s classic of mountaineering, Solo Faces. Here’s an essay from The Millions on why Salter was one of the best at writing sex.
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Elmore Leonard’s Contribution
Elmore Leonard is set to receive the 2012 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which has been awarded annually by the National Book Foundation since 1988. The medal is intended to recognize the achievements of “a person who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work.”
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To the Wonder Trailer
The trailer is out for The Tree of Life director Terrence Malick’s latest project, To the Wonder. The film, which stars Javier Bardem, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Olga Kurylenko, will be released in 2013.
From Jakarta to Franfurt
In light of this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, which had Indonesia as the official guest of honor, check out Wayan Sunarta’s essay on the rise of Indonesian literature abroad. As he explains it, “Although Indonesian literature is in the ascendant at home, it has so far failed to establish itself internationally. The number of works translated from Indonesian is still very small.”
The Reality of Slang
“What makes a word ‘real’?” Should groan-inducing words like “adorkable” be counted? Anne Curzan, language historian, gives a Ted talk about the human element in dictionaries and the importance of slang.
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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?