“When we read with a child, we are doing so much more than teaching him to read or instilling in her a love of language.” Anna Dewdney, best-selling children’s author and illustrator, died this past weekend after a battle with brain cancer. Her obituary concluded with this: “She requested that in lieu of a funeral service that people read to a child instead.”
The Ultimate Goodbye Gift
De La Pava Up for PEN American Literary Prize
As part of its 2013 literary awards, the PEN American Center will grant nearly $150,000 to writers, editors, and translators through sixteen different awards and fellowships, and for the first time ever they’ve decided to publish their shortlist online. Among the finalists is Sergio De La Pava, whose novel A Naked Singularity is up for the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a debut work. You might recall our own Garth Risk Hallberg’s profile of De La Pava last summer, and you can catch a glimpse of the author’s next book on our Second-Half 2013 Book Preview.
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Or, The Whale
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Tartt on TV
Boris is coming to the big screen. Nina Jacobson, the producer behind The Hunger Games, has acquired the rights to adapt Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Whether it will be a film or TV miniseries is still up for question, but if the actors need any help getting into character, check out our essay on identifying with Theo and learn how to tweet like Boris.
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