Deborah Eisenberg has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg. (Eisenberg profiled at The Millions.)
Eisenberg Wins the PEN/Faulkner
#workingonmynovelaboutyournovel
Cory Arcangel‘s Working on My Novel is composed solely of tweets from people who (one is led to assume) are engaged in the singularly tragic enterprise of writing books that, unlike Working on My Novel, will take years to complete, yet won’t be published by Penguin or noticed by The Paris Review. Oh, the meta-irony. And now I’ve just honored it with a Curiosities post.
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Hitchens Memoir Moved
The Christopher Hitchens memoir, Mortality, a collection of essays based around the final pieces he wrote for Vanity Fair, now has an official U.S. release date of September, and the U.K. release date has been moved to coincide with that.
Celebrating Beverly Cleary
With her 95th birthday approaching, Beverly Cleary gets the profile treatment in the Times. (previously at The Millions: Cleary’s underappreciated memoirs)
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DPRK Footage
Skateboarder Patrik Wallner snuck some video footage of North Korea around the time of the 100th birthday celebrations for its deceased ruler Kim Il-Sung. His footage shines a vivid and personal light on what’s otherwise a very concealed and distant nation.
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IMPAC shortlist
The IMPAC shortlist is in. If you don’t know about the IMPAC, it’s very unique prize with a very long longlist. The longlist is composed of nominees from over 150 libraries around the world. Those picks are then whittled down to a shortlist via a panel of judges. As you’ll see from the shortlist, since the process leading up to this award takes so long, some of the books aren’t exactly new. I think involving libraries makes the IMPAC unique compared to a lot of other awards out there. It seems a lot more egalitarian than, say, the Booker or the National Book Award, and I appreciate the international flavor as well. That’s why I included it in my prizewinners post last year. There’s more info about the award at the IMPAC site. Now, here’s the shortlist with some comments:Graceland by Chris Abani – This book about Nigeria was nominated by a library in Sweeden. – excerptMaps For Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam was an LBC nominee – we wrote about it for five posts sarting with this one. Another example of the multiculturalism of the IMPAC: this book about Pakistanis living in England was nominated by libraries in Belgium and South Africa. – excerptHavoc in Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett – I’ve been wanting to read this book ever since I first heard about it. Was read and loved at Book World. – excerptsThe Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe – excerptAn Altered Light by Jens Christian Grondahl – excerptBreaking the Tongue by Vyvyane LohDon’t Move by Margaret Mazzantini – excerptThe Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra – excerptThe Master by Colm Toibin – excerptThe Logogryph by Thomas Wharton
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Saving Borders Bookstore
I’m a little late to this one, but Ruby Vassar at the Vroman’s Bookstore Blog ran a pretty funny April Fool’s Day post.
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Help Her, Miss Manners
In the pages of the Washington Post, the venerable Miss Manners responds to an English department secretary who feels “besieged by fringe ‘academics’ who are very adamant that we are part of a conspiracy to cover up the fact that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was Shakespeare.”
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