“A perfect example of what the short story can do when the form is at its best: containing as much of an emotional blow as that of a 800-page novel, regardless of its brevity.” The Guardian awards its 4th Estate BAME short story prize to “Auld Lang Syne” by Lisa Smith. The prize was launched in 2015 in response to a report “which found that black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) writers struggled both to get published and against stereotypes imposed by the UK’s overwhelmingly white publishing industry.”
For Auld Lang Syne
Miles Klee Gets Interviewed All Over the Place
Ivyland author (and enthusiastic Tumblr-er) Miles Klee was interviewed by Matt Hackett, and a snippet was posted on Tumblr’s new Storyboard blog. If you like what you see, you can get even more from Klee courtesy of his recent Other People Podcast with Brad Listi.
●
●
Catching Mr. Harvey
Stephen Moss caught up with AD Harvey, the “independent scholar” who tricked an entire discipline into believing Charles Dickens met Fyodor Dostoevsky. (If you missed Eric Naiman’s initial piece on Harvey’s trail of deception and trickery, you’d do well to acquaint yourself now.)
●
●
“Media hype and unusual advertisements”
The Los Angeles Review of Books interviewed Xujun Eberlein, a “China-born and now Boston-based” short story writer, essayist and blogger about recent literary happenings in her native country. The first question they asked has to do with Finnegans Wake, which is selling surprisingly well in Chinese bookstores.
●
●
Sylvester Stallone, 35 Years of Paintings
“The State Russian Art Museum in St. Petersburg is hosting an exhibition of paintings by Hollywood icon Sylvester Stallone.”
●
●
GQ Questions Lorin Stein
Among the breadcrumbs doled out in this GQ slideshow/interview with Paris Review editor Lorin Stein is this: John Jeremiah Sullivan helped him write his job application.
New Year, New Interviews
For their first interview of 2013, The Rumpus talks to Zadie Smith, who also, if you’ll recall, told us about her Year in Reading last month.
●
●
“This recent column was just bonkers”
Catching you up to speed with two recent literary controversies: 1) Poets & Writers‘ MFA rankings kerfuffle gets a climactic and eloquent summary from The Missouri Review‘s Michael Nye. 2) In response to her Salon article, “How the National Book Awards made themselves irrelevant,” Victor LaValle has some fightin’ words for Laura Miller.