Graywolf Press – the publisher behind Citizen, The Empathy Exams, The Argonauts, and On Immunity: An Inoculation – has built a reputation as “a scrappy little press that harnessed and to some extent generated a revolution in nonfiction, turning the previously unprepossessing genre of the ‘lyric essay’ into a major cultural force.” Over at Vulture, Boris Kachka writes about the history of one of the nation’s leading independent literary publishers.
The Winning Team
2016 Guggenheim Fellows Announced
Earlier today, the Guggenheim Foundation announced this year’s Fellows, and the names on their list include a few that Millions readers will recognize. On the fiction side, there’s contributor Laila Lalami along with Year in Reading alumni Jess Row and Jesse Ball, while in nonfiction and poetry, there’s Amanda Petrusich along with Adam Kirsch, Chris Kraus and Deborah Landau. The winners each receive a sizeable cash grant.
2014 Guggenheim Fellows Announced
The 2014 Guggenheim Fellows were announced this week, and this year’s batch of honorees (PDF) includes ten poets, seven writers of fiction, and ten writers of “general nonfiction.” Among the names on the list, Millions readers will be thrilled to see Year In Reading contributors Hari Kunzru, Julie Orringer, Meaghan O’Rourke, and Susan Orlean, as well as a number of writers who had work mentioned in other peoples’ YIR posts: Adrian Matejka, Patricia Smith, Victoria Redel, and Claire Vaye Watkins.
●
●
On the Reading That Drags On and On
Everyone’s been there: the bookstore event at which the reader drones on and on. The Observer shares some reading horror stories (and a few successes). Sarah McNally of NYC’s McNally Jackson bookstore says, “The traditional reading format is broken.”
Finding Peter Cat
We already knew that Haruki Murakami was a writer and runner but a former jazz club owner, too? Aaron Gilbreath visited Murakami’s 1970s jazz club, Peter Cat, and found “a drab three-story cement building. Outside, a first-floor, a restaurant had set up a sampuru display of plastic foods.” For more Murakami, read our review of 1Q84.
Full Stop Blogger Call
Know some talented writers in need of a great platform? Full Stop is looking for bloggers to cover literature, film, music, politics, and a host of other topics.
●
●
Their Own Room
Were you aware there’s a new BBC2 show about the lives of the Bloomsbury Group? There is, and it’s called Life in Squares, a reference to a quote that says the group “lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles.” In The New Statesman, Rachel Cooke sits down with the series. You could also read Alexis Coe on Virginia Woolf and Downton Abbey.