Taking inspiration from the “Dear President” feature in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, in which fifty American poets and writers were asked to write several sentences addressing the next president, write a short poem of address that starts with the words, “Dear President.” Touch upon one or two of the most important issues to you about contemporary society and/or government. Share any advice, wisdom, wishes, or requests.

The National Book Foundation has announced the finalists for the 2016 National Book Awards. The annual prizes are given for books of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and young people’s literature published in the previous year. The winners receive $10,000; each finalist receives $1,000. The winners will be announced on November 16 at an awards ceremony in New York City.

The finalists in poetry are:
Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Becoming Human (Brooklyn Arts Press)
Rita Dove, Collected Poems 1974–2004 (Norton)
Peter Gizzi, Archeophonics (Wesleyan University Press)
Jay Hopler, The Abridged History of Rainfall (McSweeney’s)
Solmaz Sharif, Look (Graywolf Press)

Mark Bibbins, Jericho Brown, Katie Ford, Joy Harjo, and Tree Swenson judged.

The finalists in fiction are:
Chris Bachelder, The Throwback Special (Norton)
Paulette Jiles, News of the World (William Morrow)
Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs (Viking)
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad (Doubleday)
Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn (Amistad)

James English, Karen Joy Fowler, T. Geronimo Johnson, Julie Otsuka, and Jesmyn Ward judged.

The finalists in nonfiction are:
Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (The New Press)
Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books)
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard University Press)
Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Pantheon Books)

Cynthia Barnett, Masha Gessen, Greg Grandin, and Ronald Rosbottom judged. 

The longlists for the awards were announced in September. Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are among the literary world’s most prestigious prizes. The 2015 winners were Robin Coste Lewis in poetry for Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf), Adam Johnson in fiction for Fortune Smiles (Random House), and Ta-Nehisi Coates in nonfiction for Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau).

This past weekend, the New York Review of Books published an exposé in an attempt to uncover the true identity of the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, provoking anger and criticism from those in support of the writer’s wish to remain anonymous. Have you ever wished for anonymity, or do you imagine that you might in the future? Drawing examples from your own experiences with writing and private versus public life, write a personal essay about the issues at stake in this situation, such as celebrity authors, sexism, and the changing relationship in contemporary culture between artist and audience. 

Submissions are open for the sixth annual StoryQuarterly Fiction Prize, given for a short story. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Issue 50 of StoryQuarterly. Alexander Chee will judge.

Using the online submission system, submit a story of up to 6,250 words with a $15 entry fee by October 15. All entries will be considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Judge Alexander Chee is the author of two novels, most recently the historical epic The Queen of the Night (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). “I speak to so many young writers who still have various cynical ideas about how one gets ahead,” said Chee in a February interview with the Toast. “Really, just do your best work, stand up for yourself, stay close to your excitement. Yes, the asymmetry between effort and reward in writing is the hardest part of it in many ways—the things you work on forever that receive little or no acknowledgement or pay, the things written quickly that pay enormously or that fly around the Internet, viral—but just keep writing.”

Established in 1975 and based at Rutgers University in Camden, StoryQuarterly publishes fiction and nonfiction. The journal, edited by writer Paul Lisicky, is released quarterly in print and administers a fiction contest in the fall and a nonfiction contest in the spring. Previous winners of the Fiction Prize include Nafissa Thompson-Spires for her story “Heads of the Colored People: Four Fancy Sketches, Two Chalk Outlines, and No Apology,” Anne Ray for her story “The Pool,” and Janet Peery for her story “No Boy At All.”

Other fiction contests with upcoming deadlines include the University of Louisville’s Calvino Prize, Cutthroat’s Writing Awards, Boston Review’s Aura Estrada Short Story Contest, and Omnidawn Publishing’s Fabulist Fiction Chapbook Contest. For a full list of upcoming contests, visit the Grants & Awards database.

Photo: Alexander Chee; Credit: M. Sharkey

Last week, after a swarm of almost one hundred small earthquakes in the Salton Sea region, California’s Office of Emergency Services issued an earthquake advisory to Southern California residents warning of the potential of a larger earthquake occurring on the San Andreas fault. Write a short story in which the main plotline’s background includes the looming threat of a major earthquake. How does this create tension in the atmosphere and bring out different personality traits in each character?

The first Nobel Prize winner of 2016, announced in the Physiology or Medicine category this week, was awarded to Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi. Ohsumi is a cell biologist who won the prize for his studies of autophagy, Greek for “self eating,” a process in which the cells in our body break down or destroy, and then recycle, certain component parts. Write a poem inspired by the workings of the human body at a cellular level. You may find ideas by looking at different vocabulary and terminology, or drawing connections between cellular functions and processes to situations in your emotional life and interpersonal relationships.

Silvina López Medin was born in Buenos Aires. She is the author of three books of poetry: La noche de los bueyes (Madrid, 1999), awarded the International Young Poetry Prize by the Loewe Foundation; Esa sal en la lengua para decir manglar (Buenos Aires, 2014); and 62 brazadas (Buenos Aires, 2015). Her play Exactamente bajo el sol opened at Teatro del Pueblo in 2008. With poet Mirta Rosenberg, she has also translated Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet. She collaborates with Señal, a chapbook series for contemporary poetry from Latin America, published by Ugly Duckling Presse, BOMB Magazine, and Libros Antena Books.

We are very pleased to announce the Señal Tour, a set of bilingual readings and discussions with authors and translators from the Señal Series, featuring poets Luis Felipe Fabre from Mexico, Florencia Castellano and Pablo Katchadjian from Argentina, and their translators John Pluecker, Alexis Almeida, Rebekah Smith, Victoria Cóccaro, and Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal (reading Sor Juana). The Señal Tour will take place from October 8 to October 14 in Oakland, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, starting with a curated reading at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) Conference and ending at the beloved Poetry Project.

Señal is a chapbook series for contemporary poetry from Latin America in bilingual editions, published collaboratively by BOMB Magazine, Libros Antena Books, and Ugly Duckling Presse. Founded in 2015, Señal publishes two chapbooks a year, linked either thematically, conceptually, or trans-historically, troubling received ideas on what the terms “contemporary” and “Latin America” might represent.

When Señal was created, our goal was to bring more Latin American poetry to English readers, to make more porous the boundaries that bring so much English-language literature into other languages, and celebrate work not written in English, here in the United States and in many other countries. We do this with the books we publish, and in bringing together poets, translators, and editors to read, share, and discuss.

Now, with this tour, we are proud and excited to have poets and translators getting together to present, listen, and exchange ideas. In a time where things tend to be virtual, we love the prospect of all these different voices and languages actually coming together to speak and read in person, interact with an audience, and keep things live.

This is a huge international poetry event for a small press (four cities, six venues, three international poets, five translators), which means a great effort and need for resources, and we couldn’t have done it without the support of Poets & Writers. Their generous help has been essential to make it happen. Now we are eager to meet the Spanish and English-speaking members of the audience, who are, or hopefully will become, Señal readers and lovers of Latin American poetry.

RSVP on Facebook for the Señal Tour:

October 9: Señal at ATA, San Francisco

October 11: Señal at Poetry Foundation, Chicago

October 12: Señal at Sector 2337, Chicago

October 13: Señal Reading at NYU

October 14: Señal Reading at the Poetry Project

Photo: Silvina López Medin. Photo credit: Martin Sonzogni.

Support for Readings & Workshops in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Louis & Anne Abrons Foundation, the Axe-Houghton Foundation, the A.K. Starr Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

The National Book Foundation has announced its 2016 5 Under 35 honorees. The annual awards are given to five writers under the age of 35 who have published their first novel or story collection in the past five years. Each honoree is selected by a writer who was either a finalist for the National Book Award or a previous honoree of the 5 Under 35 program.

The 2016 recipients, who each receive $1,000, are:

Brit Bennett, author of The Mothers (Riverhead, 2016), selected by Jacqueline Woodson.

Yaa Gyasi, author of Homegoing (Knopf, 2016), selected by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Greg Jackson, author of Prodigals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), selected by Lauren Groff.

S. Li, author of Transoceanic Lights (Harvard Square Editions, 2015), selected by Karen Bender.

Thomas Pierce, author of Hall of Small Mammals (Riverhead, 2016), selected by Amity Gaige.

“We are proud to add the current 5 Under 35 honorees to the National Book Foundation’s roster of remarkable writers,” said David Steinberger, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Book Foundation. “There is no doubt that all 5 Under 35 honorees have expanded and will continue to expand the literary landscape by producing work that engages the world at large.”

Established in 2006, the 5 Under 35 program has honored more than fifty emerging writers including Angela Flournoy, Phil Klay, Valeria Luiselli, Justin Torres, and Kirstin Valdez Quade. The 2016 honorees will be celebrated at a ceremony in New York City on November 14.

Photos (clockwise from top left): Brit Bennett, Yaa Gyasi, Greg Jackson, Thomas Pierce, S. Li

Banned Books Week is an annual celebration led by a coalition of diverse organizations and foundations to encourage awareness of book censorship and recognize the freedom to read. Browse through the American Library Association’s lists of top banned books—organized by decade, classic titles, young adult authors, and more—and select a book you’ve read that strongly resonates with you. Write an essay that examines your response to the censorship or challenging of this book, drawing on your own memories of reading it and exploring the idea of an appropriate audience for this literature.

This week, write a scene in which the main character is watching the presidential debates on television with another character and a confrontation arises over a disagreement of opinions. Have these characters just met, or are they old friends? Do their differing politics come as a surprise to the reader, or to each other, or are they expected? Politics aside, what does the disagreement reveal about the characters’ respective personalities, emotional states, and motives in relation to the narrative? Consider incorporating this scene for a short story you’ve written in the past or are currently working on in order to deepen a relationship.