A pair of pieces from The Millions are among the finalists in this year’s 3 Quarks Daily Arts and Literature Prize: “Her Story Next to His: Beloved and The Odyssey” by Frank Kovarik and “Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction” by our staff writer Edan Lepucki.
The Millions Among the Finalists
Lucky Writers
Catherine Banner writes on the “privilege and luck it takes to live the writer’s life.” Pair with this Millions essay on not quitting the writing life.
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Katherine Mansfield: Book Reviewer
In a short biographical piece for Open Letters Monthly, Sam Sacks writes about the book reviewing career of Katherine Mansfield and the ways in which it “helped her build the writing muscles needed” to finish her masterful short stories. While some critics might take umbrage at the way Sacks characterizes Mansfield as “turning out deadline copy like an ink-stained Fleet Street hack,” his look into her reviews culminates in the realization that “the point [of reviewing books] is not to be constructive but to construct something of lasting value in the little space and little time you’re granted. Like all writing, it should be a passion, not a pastime. The point is to dazzle.”
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 Shortlist Announced
The shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 has been announced. This list features Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo, and three other books by Spanish and Norwegian authors.
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The Process
We write a fair amount about book covers here at The Millions, but one thing we have yet to write about is the drafting process endured by designers. Herewith, a selection of book covers that didn’t make the cut, juxtaposed with covers that did.
Talking Covers with Jonathen Lethem
Sean Manning (of Talking Covers) hosted a discussion with Jonathan Lethem last week at LA’s Last Bookstore. You can check out video and audio of the event over here, and the post also features an exclusive glimpse at the cover art for Lethem’s forthcoming novel Dissident Gardens. (Bonus: a look at Dissident Gardens in our Great 2013 Book Preview.)
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We Done Good
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First Printings Get Smaller
PW points out yet another publishing industry totem being torn down by the rise of e-books, the first printing number, once a signifier of how “big” publishers and the media expected a book to be: “In an era when first printings are down because e-books can account for as much as 50% of sales on frontlist titles, the term ‘first printing’ sounds more and more out of place.”
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