How do you become a writer? The Los Angeles Times asked 200 writers participating in their Festival of Books how they got started and created a board game based on their responses. Roll the die to find out if you’ll be a successful writer or not.
The Writing Life Game
Some Links
E-paper continues to get press. The New York Times talks up the technology's potential for newspapers. See also: The digital future of the book.MetaxuCafe is covering the Pen World Voices Festival.Sara Gran, much praised for her book Dope and her blog has a new edition of her book, Come Closer, coming out.
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Poems Come Out
Recommended Reading: Adam Fitzgerald at LitHub interviews Deborah Landau about her newest collection of poetry, The Uses of the Body. Read it with this Leah Falk piece from The Millions about poets reading aloud.
The IMPAC Dublin Longlist
As of this morning, the 2014 IMPAC Dublin longlist is out, and the titles that made the final cut are an eclectic assortment. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín (which we reviewed) made the cut, as did The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson (which won the Pulitzer earlier this year) and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (which won the Booker Prize).
Version Control
“Arguably versioning is a practice reserved for when a literary translator isn’t available or perhaps doesn’t actually exist who can bridge both languages. At worst, it has and can be done by colonisers or writers from major languages mangling minor literatures for sport and without care from a position of imbedded prejudice, power and authority.” Jen Calleja on the difference between translating and versioning of an original text, over at The Quietus.
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Google Enters the eBookstore Ring
Google took the wraps off its long-awaited ebookstore today. Google ebooks can be bought at Google Books and are also available at Powells and indie bookstore portal IndieBound (both of which are missing out on some serious publicity by not having info about this on their front page today). The ebooks are readable on a variety of platforms, but not on the Kindle (at least not without some tweaking).
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“Hauntedness is a feeling.”
Wyvern is publishing a “Haunted” theme issue just in time for Halloween this year, and you have until mid-September to submit your work. “Haunting is in your bones,” Wyvern’s editors write. “You know it when you feel it, and you know it when you write it. That is what we're looking for.”
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