“Every streetlight is a slightly different hue/of white the squares like the blank faces of robots/offer the Hondas and Toyotas idling in the lot something/like hope and yet I am thinking of all of the people on the planes/landing and taking off the twin miracles of arrival and departure/each of them singing ‘Take Me With You’ whether they know/the song or not they are all singing”. A poem written by Dean Rader on the day of Prince’s death.
Taking Off
Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 Shortlist Announced
The shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 has been announced. This list features Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo, and three other books by Spanish and Norwegian authors.
●
●
Best Screams
Peruse the complete ballots for Leroy Stevens' "Favorite Recorded Scream" project. "Won't Get Fooled Again?" Oh, yes, it's in there.
●
●
Long Lists of Everything
“I started keeping a journal when I was eight, but even before then I was a kid who loved making long lists of everything I could see or remember. Coconut, tricycle, jeepney, air freshener, I would write, for example, and my lists would lengthen and become even more specific as I grew to know the world around me. […] Reading and writing always seemed a part of my life and identity.” For The Rumpus, Swati Khurana interviews Janine Joseph about writing poems as teenagers, writing from experience, and what it meant for Joseph to “come out” as an undocumented immigrant.
Literary Playlists (Again)
A. A. Knopf and Doubleday publishers have gathered Spotify playlists by such notables as Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan, Erin Morgenstern, and a selection of songs and artists mentioned in Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.
●
●
Calling All Students!
Calling all undergrads and grad students! McSweeney’s is holding their first-ever Student Short Story Contest. The grand prize -- $500 and publication in their 51st issue -- will go to the student who sends in the best story before the last day of August. Get cracking, but don’t go beyond their 7,500-word limit.
●
●
Minister of Defense and Propaganda of the New Cinema
Recommended Reading: On the the anticriticism of Jonas Mekas, the "raving maniac of the cinema," courtesy of The Paris Review.