The Rona Jaffe Foundation has announced the six recipients of the 2015 Rona Jaffe Writers’ Awards, which are given annually to emerging women writers. This year’s winners are Millions contributor Meehan Crist for nonfiction, Vanessa Hua for fiction, Ashley M. Jones for poetry, Britteney Black Rose Kapri for poetry, Amanda Rea for fiction, and Natalie Haney Tilghman for fiction. Past award winners include Eula Biss, Lan Samantha Chang, Rivka Galchen, Rebecca Lee, ZZ Packer, and Tracy K. Smith.
Women Writers are Winners
John Berger, In Memoriam
The British critic, essayist, and novelist John Berger died yesterday at his home in France, reports The New York Times. Probably best known for his book of art-criticism-as-philosophy Ways of Seeing, which was turned into a popular BBC series and sold more than a million copies, Berger also won the Booker prize for G. in 1972 and was nominated again in 2008 for an epistolary novel, From A to X. The Guardian has rounded up some of his quotes, including the apt-feeling “[h]ope is not a form of guarantee; it’s a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.”
Boltanski’s No Man’s Land
French installation artist of the forgotten, Christian Boltanski, presents a new exhibit in New York: a vast landscape of old clothes and biscuit tins entitled No Man’s Land at the Park Avenue Armory. Image gallery at The Daily Beast.
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“It is difficult / to get the news from poems.”
As part of their 80th anniversary celebration, the Academy of American Poets recently revamped their website. The updated website now boasts such features as “geographically relevant information (such as local poetry events),” “interviews with renowned poets,” and “free lesson plans tailored for K-12 teachers.” Go take a look for yourself. I recommend starting with Sally Van Doren’s poem, “Thief.”
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Crash Course
Koa Beck’s father gave her a copy of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying when she was 15 years old. Depending on your persuasion, this was either a brilliant idea or an awful parental blunder. Regardless, Beck says the book (aided by The Bell Jar and Diary of a Mad Housewife) helped her understand that “the game was rigged, that everyone was lying, [and] that there was so much more to being a woman than what society said there was.”
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The Secret Life of Books
“They might underline a page number, draw a little star on the last page, or write their first initial somewhere in the book.” A librarian in Scotland discovered a secret code used by elderly patrons to track which books they already read. From our archives: an essay on the importance of libraries and how they can stay relevant.
Cockroaches in Skinny Jeans
Is that an iPod Nano? And a fixed gear bike? Uh-oh: you might have hipsters (via).
Goodbye to Brazenhead
Recommended reading: Brian Patrick Eha‘s goodbye to Brazenhead Books, published in the New Yorker. Pair with J.T. Price‘s piece on the closing of Brazenhead for The Millions.