“Morality… is a slippery slope and nowhere more, perhaps, than in regard to art, to literature, which begins as the expression of a single heart, a single mind. That it becomes more than that — connective, the fiber of a conversation between writer and reader, and between both of them and the world — is not just the point but the miracle… To frame this miracle in moral terms is to misread what art extends to us: a way of joining, for a moment only, across the void.” In an article for the LA Times, David L. Ulin considers the implications of the George V. Hunt, SJ Prize for Excellence in Journalism, Arts and Letters, which will award $25,000 to a writer “of sound moral character and reputation [who] must not have published works that are manifestly atheistically or morally offensive.”
Literature, Morality, and $25,000
New Miranda July Work on the Way
Welcome news for Miranda July fans: she tweeted this week that she’s finished work on her debut novel, The First Bad Man. The book will publish in January 2015.
Septuagenarian Akutagawa Prize Winner
Paging Sonya Chung and the rest of the Bloom gang: one of this year’s Akutagawa Prize winners is a seventy-five year old woman named Natsuko Kuroda. How’s that for a Post-40 Bloomer? (h/t Dustin Kurtz)
A Wrinkle in Time to Become a Film
Childhood readers and lovers of A Wrinkle in Time, rejoice! It may finally become a full-length movie, with a screenplay written by Jennifer Lee of Frozen fame.
Let the Wild Rumpus Begin
Dave Eggers shares the skinny on his forthcoming Where the Wild Things Are project – including an excerpt of the novel and the killer trailer for the movie version – with The New Yorker.
SUNY Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center
Recommended Reading: Just about every poet listed on SUNY Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center, but particularly the work of my former creative writing professor, Paolo Javier. His page was added two days ago.
Incendiary Verse
Do you love poetry, but often wish you were monitored on more government watchlists? Well, now you can scratch both of those itches by purchasing Poetry of the Taliban, a new anthology endorsed by and published on the group’s website. Unsurprisingly, the book has garnered its share of criticism, but as Melville House’s Kelly Burdick notes, it also has a coalition of allies and proponents.
Keith Gessen’s Longform Podcast
n+1 editor Keith Gessen discusses how the magazine’s editors “are slowing down.” “We’re not mad at anyone anymore,” he says. “We think everything is great.”