The Ashmead Award is presently accepting nominations, so if you know an exceptional young editor it may be time to break out the letterhead.
Is there a rising star among you?
Disappearing Welsh
If there existed a trophy for the ugliest-looking but prettiest-sounding language, then the 721,700 living Welsh speakers would boast more championships than Alabama’s football team. Yes, the Welsh. They of the villages Llangefni and Llanfairfechan. (To say nothing of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.) Wouldn’t it be a shame for such a language to disappear? For writing in this language to stop being published? Stanford’s Cynthia Haven thinks so.
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Book Coverage As Premium Content
The Chicago Tribune is rolling out a new premium books section for $99 a year. The Printers Row offering (named for a Chicago neighborhood) “will feature 24 pages of book reviews, author interviews and Chicago-focused literary news, along with a weekly bonus book of short fiction.” You can either feel validated (special HBO-style “premium” section for readers!) or marginalized (so few people care about this that you have to pay extra if you want it.)
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Truest Forms
As a literary technique, imitation is usually thought of as an amateur move, despite the number of classic works that began as overt acts of mimicry. At the Ploughshares blog, Anca Szilagyi comes up with several prompts for writers who want to imitate thoughtfully.
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Bedtime Story
According to the Times, Adam Mansbach’s “children’s book for adults” Go the F–k to Sleep has gone “viral” well in advance of its October release date, at one point climbing all the way to #2 on Amazon. Bonus Link: The Millions Interview with Mansbach.
A Girl Is a Fully-Formed Thing
“The things I do not want to write about become the things I write about.” Year in Reading alumnus Eimear McBride talks to The Guardian on the occasion of her second novel’s arrival. The Lesser Bohemians follows upon her hugely successful debut, A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, which we reviewed back when it came out in the U.S.
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