Two of my favorite writing contests are wrapping up this October. You have until the first of the month to enter the Missouri Review’s Editors’ Prize Contest. $5,000 will be awarded to the best fiction, essay, and poetry. Meanwhile, you have until October 31st to enter DIAGRAM’s Essay Contest, which is open to all types of essays such as those “in an expansive sense, meaning essay as experiment, essay as heterogenous and sometimes strange or unruly beast.” That contest’s prize is $1,000 plus publication.
Writing Contests Galore
Kafka Papers Overcome Kafkaesque Legal Issues
After a long and complicated drama that played out for five years in Israeli courts, a collection of Franz Kafka and Max Brod manuscripts will be transferred to the National Library in Jerusalem. The unique circumstances at play in this case have been previously written about by Elif Batuman.
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Border Borrowing
The Haskell Free Library straddles the U.S.-Canadian border. Enter the library in the United States, and browse through the books in Canada.
The Brits Are Wrong…
If you’re not watching Masterpiece Theatre’s toothsome Emma on Sundays, Jane Austen enthusiasts, you should be. No zombies. We promise.
Self-Publishing… With Penguin
Want to be published by Penguin? For $99 (£60), you can! As stated in this Guardian article, “Penguin USA will provide the service through its genre-fiction online community, Book Country, which launched in May offering wannabe authors the opportunity to post their work online and receive feedback.” The news comes on the heels of Amazon’s announcement that Amanda Hocking has become the second self-published author to tally 1,000,000 Kindle sales.
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The Limits of Good Taste
In his review of a collection of rejected New Yorker covers titled Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See, Jeet Heer details the magazine’s history of straddling the divide between bourgeoisie complacency and bohemian angst.
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Inflight Reading
A German airline has teamed up with a local press for a new campaign that allows each passenger to travel with an extra two pounds just for books. Pair with this Millions piece on the weight of moving books.