Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:
Appropriating the voice of the Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway character has its risks, but some writers are able to pull it off. At Literary Hub, Robert Hahn considers three novelists who are “crucially linked by their appropriation of the Carraway narration:” Donna Tartt, Lorrie Moore, and Richard Ford.
The National Book Foundation has announced its tenth annual 5 Under 35 honorees. The award is given to writers under the age of thirty-five who have published one book of fiction within the last five years. Among the honorees—who will each receive $1,000—are Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House; Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins; and Megan Kruse, author of Call Me Home. Read more at the Grants & Awards Blog.
Meanwhile, the finalists for the second annual Kirkus Prizes in fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature have been announced. The nonfiction finalists include Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me and Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk; the fiction finalists include Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies and Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth. The winners, who will each receive $50,000, will be named on October 15.
Speaking of Valeria Luiselli, read an interview with the Kirkus Prize finalist at Asymptote journal, in which she discusses her influences, the decision to write in Spanish, the importance of translation, and the growing attention on Latin American literature.
And while we’re on the theme of translation, happy International Translation Day! Celebrate by reading literature in translation at journals such as Asymptote, Words Without Borders, and World Literature Today.
Former National Endowment for the Arts literature director Ira Silverberg will join Simon & Schuster as a senior editor in October. Silverberg has held numerous positions in publishing—as an agent, editor, and publisher—and has served on the boards of organizations including PEN American Center and Bomb magazine. (Authorlink)
In other publishing news, Paris Review editor in chief Lorin Stein has accepted an editor at large position at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Stein will acquire and/or edit between four and eight titles a year for the publisher’s Macmillan division. (Publishers Weekly)
The U.K.’s Folio Prize for fiction is currently in sponsorship limbo, and will not run in 2016. The Folio Society announced it would not renew its sponsorship of the £40,000 prize, which was conferred to George Saunders in 2014 and Akhil Sharma in 2015. (Bookseller)
A young adult novel that was recently banned in New Zealand is to be published by Polis Books in the U.S. and Canada. Ted Dawe’s award-winning book Into the River was the first book to be banned in New Zealand in more than twenty years. (GalleyCat)
