Telepoem Booth, the Legacy of Bishop and Lowell, and More
Finalists announced for the 2017 Best Translated Book Awards; a classics scholar and his father recreate the journey of Odysseus; typos in literature; and other news.
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Finalists announced for the 2017 Best Translated Book Awards; a classics scholar and his father recreate the journey of Odysseus; typos in literature; and other news.
Donald Trump plugs a stunt book with blank pages; Patricia Lockwood as poet and Twitter maven; Lena Dunham talks books; and other news.
Kathryn Schulz chronicles literature’s obsession with the Arctic; the case for hate-reading; an anesthesiologist’s take on poetry; and other news.
“When I read her the old fairy tales about stepmothers, I worried I was reading her an evil version of myself,” writes Leslie Jamison in a recent essay published in New York Times Magazine. “In the Shadow of a Fairy Tale” explores Jamison’s personal experience as a stepmother through the lens of stepmothers in fairy tales and cultural archetypes. Choose a fairy-tale archetype that feels resonant in some way to you, whether now or in the past. Write an essay examining the various connections between this archetype and its contemporary sociocultural counterpart, which may have resulted in certain expectations and anxieties. In what ways do you fit—and also not quite fit—into the role?
Poets and writers share their notes on writing in this series of micro craft essays. In the latest installment: revision that will force your verbs into action and clarify your intent.
The winners of the 101st annual Pulitzer Prizes were announced today at Columbia University in New York City. Of the twenty-one categories, the prizes in letters are awarded annually for works of literature published in the previous year. Each winner receives $10,000.
Tyehimba Jess won the prize in poetry for his collection Olio (Wave Books). The finalists were the late Adrienne Rich for Collected Poems: 1950-2012 (W.W. Norton) and Campbell McGrath for XX (Ecco).
Colson Whitehead won the prize in fiction for his novel The Underground Railroad (Doubleday). The finalists were Adam Haslett’s Imagine Me Gone (Little, Brown) and C. E. Morgan’s The Sport of Kings (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Hisham Matar won the prize in autobiography for The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between (Random House). The finalists were Susan Faludi’s In the Darkroom (Metropolitan Books) and the late Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air (Random House).
Visit the Pulitzer Prize website for a complete list of winners and finalists in each of the twenty-one categories, including general nonfiction, journalism, and drama.
Hungarian-American newspaper publisher and journalist Joseph Pulitzer established the Pulitzer Prizes in 1911, and the first prize was administered in 1917. The 2016 winners included poet Peter Balakian and fiction writer Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Listen to Tyehimba Jess read an excerpt from Olio, and hear an interview with Colson Whitehead about The Underground Railroad in Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast.
(Photo, from left: Tyehimba Jess, Colson Whitehead)
Rebecca Solnit and the impact of feminist storytelling; Edgar Allen Poe’s foray into natural philosophy; the challenges of writing a Trump biography for children; and other news.