The Table 4 Writers Foundation, which was established in the honor of Elaine Kaufman, will award $2,000 grants for never-before-published works of fiction and non-fiction. The deadline for submissions is October 15. (h/t Bill Morris, who has written about the foundation and grant program before.)
Table 4 Grants
Begin Now
“You don’t have to immediately quit your job to become a writer. You need only to start writing.” The New York Times transcribes an excerpt from the “Dear Sugars” podcast with Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond. For more writerly advice, see our own columnists Swarm & Spark on whether writing a novel will jeopardize your mental health.
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Reading Poetry
“The very best way to read a poem is perhaps to be young, intelligent, and slightly drunk.” The Atlantic offers 20 strategies for reading poetry, and they pair well with Leah Falk‘s look at “Performance Anxiety: When Poets Read Aloud.”
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In the Frame
Photographers who are tired of weddings should start shooting book covers. When New Directions asked to use one of Allen Frame’s photos for the cover of Robert Bolaño’s Last Evenings on Earth, he gave them access to his archive instead. Today, nine Frame photos have been used on Bolaño book covers. You can view them here or at New York City’s Gitterman Gallery.
newspeak is actualy newtxt
John McWhorter, linguist and author of What Language is (And What it Isn’t and What it Could Be), takes a look at the history of spoken and written language in an effort to understand how text messaging, IMs, and other informal forms of written language impact literacy.
Free Access to the Oxford African American Studies Center
In observance of Black History Month, the Oxford African American Studies Center is granting free online access to its archives. Simply enter the login name “blackhistorymonth” and use the password, “onlineaccess.”
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Before the Fall
Calling a book “the spiritual prequel to The Road” is a great way to signal its command of dystopian tropes. It’s what Gabe Durham wrote about Maxwell Neely-Cohen’s recent YA novel Echo of the Boom. At The Rumpus, Durham interviews Neely-Cohen, who describes how he tried to give a metafictional bent to the novel. Related: we asked high school students to pick their favorite YA books of 2013.
Little, Brown in the News
U.S. publishing house Little, Brown had a rough day in the news yesterday. Its coy marketing tactics have rubbed some booksellers the wrong way, reports Julie Bosman for The New York Times. Later on, The New York Post‘s Keith J. Kelly noted that the publisher has dropped one of its bigger titles. Jason Bennett raises some additional questions.
Just a Formality
The novelist Julie Schumacher wrote her latest, Dear Committee Members, entirely in the form of letters of recommendation. The format allowed her to illustrate the travails of a creative writing professor through a medium often ignored in fiction. At The Awl, Jessica Gross and Merve Emre talk about the novel. Pair with: Cathy Day on academia’s novel crisis.
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