Recommended Reading: The Orphan Master’s Son author Adam Johnson penned a long profile of Kim Jong-Il’s “personal chef, court jester, and sidekick,” and it’s every bit as wild as you’re probably imagining.
“Fujimoto would never see him apologize again.”
The Day After Hun’s Day
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Found in Translation
“The night of the typhoon, the sky was full, the world destroyed.” Eleanor Goodman is one of 13 translators who won the PEN/Heim Translation Fund this year. Goodman won for her translation of Chinese poet Wang Xiaoni’s collection, Something Crosses My Mind, which will be published by Zephyr Press.
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Defining Success
“There are many ways to define ‘success’ as a writer,” and Jeffrey Condran writes about his own path to and definition of writerly success for The Missouri Review‘s blog. Hint: it has something to do with craft, something to do with editing, and a lot to do with a certain magazine.
Fish Cop
Nobody likes to be critiqued. Lucas Gardener at The New Yorker would really like to assure all of his concerned Creative Writing workshop classmates that his most recent submission, “Creative Writing Beatdown,” is entirely fictional and has no basis in reality. Really.
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Emerging Writers Fellowships — Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Emerging writers, check it out: the Asian American Writers’ Workshop is accepting applications for TWO emerging writers’ fellowships (fiction and nonfiction), $5000 plus mentoring and work space. May 16 deadline, more info here.
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“Comfort savagery”
“Others may prefer to will themselves into James Bond’s dinner jacket and Aston Martin DB4, but I’d rather slip into a !Kung hunter’s penis sheath and heft his hunting spear.” At The Guardian, Will Self explores his odd preference for deeply uncomfortable comfort reading.
J.D. Salinger’s Stories: Read Them If You Must
OK, so you’ve read our article about why you should respect J.D. Salinger’s wishes by not reading his unpublished stories, but you’ve also noticed that nobody’s really said anything about his stories that are out-of-print.