Cozy up in your cardigan and sip on some cider, October promises outstanding new reads.
- The Wilds: Elliot bends genres in this short story collection. With Sci-fi infused with Southern Gothic, her unique narrative ability has explosive results.
- Lila: Robinson devotees can revisit Gilead, the setting of her 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, in this new tale.
- Citizen: Rankine's bold, beautiful, and troubling lyrics describe racial aggressions in daily life and the media.
AWARDS GALORE
Bryn Chancellor and Harry Moore are the announced winners of the 2014 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Contest from Alabama.
The National Book Foundation Announced Finalists for the National Book Awards.
According to The Guardian:
Cartoonist (the first ever to be selected) Roz Chast's memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is joined in the nonfiction category by John Lahr for his biography Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, Anand Gopal's No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes, Evan Osnos's Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China and two-time Pulitzer winner Edward O Wilson's The Meaning of Human Existence.
The fiction category is stacked with newcomers, with the exception of Marilynne Robinson, a two-time finalist and Pulitzer prize winner, who is nominated for Lila. The other finalists are former US marine Phil Klay's Redeployment, Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman, Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See and Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven.
The poetry nominees are Louise Gl�ck's Faithful and Virtuous Night, Fanny Howe's Second Childhood, Maureen N McLane's This Blue, Fred Moten's The Feel Trio and Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric. All finalists are first-time nominees except for Gl�ck, who has been nominated three times and won the Pulitzer prize in 1993.
INTERVIEWS & REFLECTIONS
NPR's David Greene has taken the 6,000-mile ride on the Trans-Siberian Railway, from Moscow to Vladivostok, twice. His second trip on is chronicled in Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia. Listen here.
American journalist Suki Kim got a teaching job at an elite, all-male university in the North Korean capital for six months. She writes about her experience in Without You, There Is No Us. Listen here.
Peter Mendelsund has designed hundreds of book covers, including two new ones of his own: Cover and What We See When We Read. Hear him talk about his process and why "dead authors get the best" covers. Listen here.
TIDBITS GOOD FOR LITERARY COCKTAIL PARTIES
Get into the Halloween spirit! Browse two lists of spooky book suggestions from The Telegraph and CBS.
In a move thought to be designed to put pressure on Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters, Chinese authorities have detained one scholar and banned the books of eight writers. According to The Washington Post, well known poet Wang Zang's Twitter picture of himself raising his middle finger and holding an umbrella, a symbol of solidarity adopted by protesters, likely led to him being arrested for "provoking trouble," a charge can lead to up to three years in prison.
Did you know that this month in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found on a Baltimore street, semi-conscious, dressed in clothes that weren't his own? Four days later he passed, and details of the events preceding his death are still hazy. It may be macabre, but if you have an interest in more writers' strange deaths, read about them here.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Poets & Writers is a comprehensive source for on-going contests, grants, awards, and calls for submissions.
Fiction-free entry: Black Balloon Publishing, Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize. A prize of $5,000 and publication by Black Balloon Publishing will be given annually for a short story collection or a novel.
Poetry: American Poetry Review, Honickman First Book Prize. A prize of $3,000 and publication by American Poetry Review is given annually for a first poetry collection.
Local: Burnside Review Press Book Award submissions will be accepted from August 15 to November 30, 2014. Winner of the Burnside Review Press Book Award will receive $1000, plus ten copies of the book.
ATTIC INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
COMMUNITY NEWS
The Attic Institute is proud to announce that the talented, smart, and big-hearted Whitney Otto
has been named the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters' newest Associate Fellow. She'll be teaching the Institute Workshop next year.
And, Associate Fellow Karen Karbo will join other award-winning writers from Seattle to New York City as part of Amtrak's new residency for writers program.
