To add to the awards lists, Believer has announced its editors’ shortlist for the Believer Book Award, which looks to acknowledge “the strongest and most underappreciated” novels of the year. The shortlist includes Danielle Dutton’s Sprawl; Kira Henehan’s Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles (reviewed for The Millions); James Hynes‘ Next, Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps (reviewed for The Millions); and Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies (reviewed here).
The Believer Book Award
“The only option is to participate.”
The Missouri Review interview with Jessa Crispin, founder of Bookslut. If you've yet to stumble upon the decade old literary blog, you might want to start with this recent post from Kevin Frazier on Edith Wharton and Julian Barnes. Or this treat from the archives about Monica McFawn Robinson trying to construct an undergraduate course syllabus on love.
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Silly Prizes
In a piece with which our own Mark O'Connell probably agrees, Tim Parks explains the Nobel Prize for Literature's inherent silliness.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Bernhard, Martin, Dickens
Back in print is Thomas Bernhard's memoir Gathering Evidence & My Prizes. Also new this week are a pair of spiffy box sets, George R.R. Martin's Song Of Ice and Fire and the major works of Charles Dickens.
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Mo Yan’s “Bull”
Recommended Reading: “Bull” by Mo Yan, the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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#ThisIsWhere The Sun Bakes Our Chancletas
To kick off South Florida’s O, Miami poetry festival (which I’ve written about before), event organizers and WLRN staffers are asking local residents to snap photos of “a place in South Florida that means something to [them],” and “write a short poem about it including the phrase ‘this is where.’” Then, share the poems and photos on Twitter or Instagram for a chance to be featured throughout the month of April. Meanwhile, the New York Times is on it.
Books, Charity, and Africa
The Hipster Book Club is doing a literary-themed charity drive for the famine in the Horn of Africa.