McPherson & Co. typically does print runs of just 2,000 books. With the tiny press about to put out Jaimy Gordon’s National Book Award-nominated Lord of Misrule, Barnes & Noble alone wants 2,000, and the question is how many to print.
The Small Press and the Big Prize
Libraries: Future and Present
“Flooded with data as we are, each day brings even more innovations and technologies to help us mine, sort, and generate even more information. Asking about the future of libraries is another way of asking where this big, hot mess of information is taking us.” Justin Wadland reviews three books on libraries and attempts to predict the future of these institutions in a piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Meanwhile, Florida Polytechnic University has just opened and its library has no books at all.
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Our Lucrative Profession
The folks at Harper’s Bazaar (not Harper’s Magazine) are launching a new short story competition, and the grand prize is wild: an all-expenses-paid weeklong stay on a private Scottish island, publication in the May 2014 issue of the magazine and a first-edition book from the Asprey’s Fine and Rare Books Department, worth up to £3,000. (And yes, that’s pounds, not dollars.)
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Shirley Clarke Project Commences
Shirley Clarke, older sister of Elaine Dundy (who wrote Millions favorite The Dud Avocado), was an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. If you’re curious about her work, you’ll be happy to learn that Milestone Films will soon begin their Shirley Clarke Project by releasing her restored documentaries, and on Friday, May 4th, they’ll be releasing her first film, The Connection. You can check out a trailer here. (via)
Sally Wen Mao Reimagines Lost Moments
Poet and Oculus author, Sally Wen Mao, discusses art's role in redeeming history and reimagining lost moments and secrets.
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Creepy Cervantes
A team of archaeologists just found Cervantes‘s body, and while that seems like a fun literary and historical event, the New Yorker‘s Ilan Stevens has a slightly different perspective: “Frankly, there is something creepy about bringing Cervantes back from the dead.”
Profiling Edward P. Jones
The Washington Post offers a long profile of the still underappreciated Edward P. Jones. We learn he hasn’t put a word of fiction to paper in four years but has been writing in his head. “‘I write a lot in my head,’ he says. ‘I’ve never been driven to write things down.'” (via @keelinmc)
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