The folks at Harper’s Bazaar (not Harper’s Magazine) are launching a new short story competition, and the grand prize is wild: an all-expenses-paid weeklong stay on a private Scottish island, publication in the May 2014 issue of the magazine and a first-edition book from the Asprey’s Fine and Rare Books Department, worth up to £3,000. (And yes, that’s pounds, not dollars.)
Our Lucrative Profession
On Sexism in Literature
How do you feel about claims that men avoid reading women? Before you answer, consider this piece, which argues that sexism in the lit world is more complicated than it may appear. (For more, go check out our own piece on sexism on the internet, or else take a look at this Harvard Divinity School study on how sexism shapes responses to women’s writing.)
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This is a Curiosity-novel
In "kids these days" news, any book now counts as a "novel." There are fiction novels and nonfiction novels, recipe novels and poetry novels and picture novels and, less facetiously, a new novel told in letters of recommendation, Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members. And now that you've finished my three-sentence nonfiction digital novel, here's the world's longest novel, which clocks in at 3 million pages that I confess I have not read.
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And the NMA Winners Are…
The good souls at Longform.org have organized all of this year’s National Magazine Award winners.
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Shame and Queerness
Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased, writes on shame and queer identity. “Shame would give me the power to submit to almost anything.”
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Broadcasting the Atocha Station
An A+ radio interview with Leaving the Atocha Station author Ben Lerner, you say? Why, yes, I think that's right up my alley.
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Plot Framing Device or Facebook Marketing Plot?
Though not exactly the first to do so, Kyle Rutkin is asking for $4,000 on Kickstarter to fund his writing a novel entirely through the Facebook timeline.