Recommended Reading: Enrique Vila-Matas on rock ‘n’ roll, anti-artists, and the central motor of his work.
Dead Ends
Dead Pig Collectibles
Warren Ellis’s Dead Pig Collector was released this week as a Kindle Single, and with it came a whole heap of extras. To wit: there’s an online excerpt, an author interview, another piece of fiction, and also an accompanying music playlist created by the author. (In that interview, he remarks that his next novel will be based on this talk he gave two years ago.)
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The Brief Wondrous Influences of Junot Díaz
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao author Junot Díaz lists the movies, TV shows and books that most influenced him at Vulture.
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Ponyboy Breaks Into Song
A musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders is scheduled to debut in Chicago this summer, directed by Liesl Tommy and written by Adam Rapp.
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Women Writers are Winners
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.
By Heart
“Everyone says Anna Karenina is about individual desire going against society, but I actually think the opposite is stronger: the way societal forces limit the expression of the individual.” Here is Mary Gaitskill on Anna Karenina for The Atlantic’s By Heart series, in which writers reflect on some of their favorite passages in all of literature. We’ve brought you a bit on By Heart here, here, and here.
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McCann and Hemon in Conversation
The kind folks at the PEN American Center recorded Colum McCann’s recent conversation with author and soccer ace Aleksandar Hemon. Listen to the pair discuss the Western distinction between fiction and non-fiction, and also the hypothetical merits of “watching a potato.”
A Poetry Reading Workshop
“Poets ought to learn how to present work as well as produce it,” says Joe Weil, who shares some invaluable Tips for Doing a Poetry Reading. (Bonus: our own Janet Potter offers a tutorial on the appropriate way to introduce an author [or poet] before their reading.)
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