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The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation named yesterday the winners of its 2011 fellowships for writers in the United States and Canada. The writers receiving awards, which last year averaged $36,867, are most in the middle stages of their careers, with two or more books published. Award amounts vary based on a writers' individual budget requests.
The fellows are, in poetry:
Peter Campion
Claudia Emerson Paul Guest
Kimberly Johnson Eleanor Lerman
Maurice Manning
Bill Porter (translation)
D. A. Powell
A. E. Stallings
Matthew Zapruder
Cynthia Zarin
In fiction:
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Jonathan Dee
Christie Hodgen
Clancy Martin
Valerie Martin
Karen
Russell David Vann
Lara Vapnyar
Brad Watson
In creative nonfiction:
Eula Biss
Mary Cappello
John D’Agata Rosemary Mahoney
Katherine Russell Rich
Patricia Volk
In the video below, fiction fellow Lara Vapnyar, who emigrated from Moscow in the early nineties, describes her experience as a writer in America.
Having received fewer submissions than they have in the past, the journal opted to accept entries until April 15.
Judging this year's entries will be poet Lia Purpura, author of King Baby (Alice James Books, 2009); fiction writer Adrianne Harun, author of the story collection The King of Limbo (Mariner Books, 2002); and creative nonfiction writer Ira Sukrungruang, author of Talk Thai: The Adventures of a Buddhist Boy (University of Missouri Press, 2010).
Last year's winners were Jennifer Perrine for her poem "When the Dazzle Isn't Gradual," Jacob Appel for his story "Bait and Switch," and Angela Tung for her essay "An Old Man on the Frontier Loses His Horse," selected by Allison Joseph, Jess Walter, and Rebecca McClanahan, respectively.
Complete guidelines for entry and samples of work published in the journal are available on the Bellingham ReviewWeb site.
Zone 3 Press, housed at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, is accepting entries for a new book competition "open to anyone who can carve an artful exposition, drive a factual narrative, or strum a lyric sentence." One creative nonfiction manuscript will be selected for publication by the press, and the winning writer will receive one thousand dollars.
The judge is Baltimore poet and essayist Lia Purpura, author of the prose collections Increase (University of Georgia Press, 2000), On Looking (Sarabande Books, 2006), and Rough Likeness, which is forthcoming from Sarabande Books in 2012. Her poetry collections include The Brighter the Veil (Orchises Press, 1996) and King Baby (Alice James Books, 2008).
Eligible manuscripts should be 150 to 300 pages, and writers are encouraged to submit works that "embrace creative nonfiction’s potential by combining lyric exposition,
researched reflection, travel dialogues, or creative criticism." The entry deadline is May 1. Complete deadlines can be found on the press's Web site.
In the video below, Purpura, whose prose works have been referred to as "lyric essays," reads from her latest collection of poetry.
On April 15 Little, Brown will publish The Pale King, David Foster Wallace's final, unfinished novel. In this BBC documentary, Geoff Ward discusses the life and works of the author who committed suicide in 2008, at the age of forty-six. Ward also talks to Wallace's editor, Michael Pietsch, about the difficult task of assembling Wallace's final fragments into The Pale King.
Linda Gray Sexton's memoir Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, originally published in 1994 by Little, Brown, was just rereleased in paperback by Counterpoint Press. Anne Sexton herself wrote a play titled Mercy Street, and a posthumous book of poetry, 45 Mercy Street, was published in 1976, two years after she committed suicide. In 1986, Peter Gabriel released his fifth album, So, which includes the song "Mercy Street," dedicated to the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
This short film by Tucker Capps, featuring music by Goldmund, is inspired by "First," an essay from Ryan Van Meter's debut collection, If You Knew Then What I Know Now, to be published next month by Sarabande Books.
Yesterday the Lambda Literary Foundation announced the finalists for its twenty-third annual "Lammy" literary awards. Books are considered on the basis of their being authored by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writers or depicting LGBT characters.
Below are the contenders for prizes in poetry, fiction, and debut fiction, selected from a record pool of entries: 520 titles submitted by 230 publishers. The full lists of finalists in the additional Lammy categories, including biography, anthology, and erotica, are available on the Lambda Literary Foundation Web site.
Gay Poetry darkacre by Greg Hewett (Coffee House Press) then, we were still living by Michael Klein (GenPop Books) Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Pleasure by Brian Teare (Ahsahta Press) The Salt Ecstasies: Poems by James L. White (Graywolf Press)
Lesbian Poetry Money for Sunsets by Elizabeth J. Colen (Steel Toe Books) The Inquisition Yours by Jen Currin (Coach House Books) The Sensual World Re-emerges by Eleanor Lerman (Sarabande Books) White Shirt by Laurie MacFayden (Frontenac House) The Nights Also by Anna Swanson (Tightrope Books)
Gay Debut Fiction XOXO Hayden by Chris Corkum (P. D. Publishing) Probation by Tom Mendicino (Kensington Publishing) Bob the Book by David Pratt (Chelsea Station Editions) The Palisades by Tom Schabarum (Cascadia Publishing) Passes Through by Rob Stephenson (University of Alabama Press)
Lesbian Debut Fiction Alcestis by Katharine Beutner (Soho Press) Sub Rosa by Amber Dawn (Arsenal Pulp Press) Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard (The Permanent Press) The More I Owe You by Michael Sledge (Counterpoint Press) One More Stop by Lois Walden (Arcadia Books)
Bisexual Fiction Fall Asleep Forgetting by Georgeann Packard (The Permanent Press) If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous (Harper Perennial) Krakow Melt by Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp Press) The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet by Myrlin A. Hermes (Harper Perennial) Pride/Prejudice: A Novel of Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, and Their Forbidden Lovers by Ann Herendeen (Harper Paperbacks)
Gay Fiction By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Children of the Sun by Max Schaefer (Soft Skull) Consolation by Jonathan Strong (Pressed Wafer) The Silver Hearted by David McConnell (Alyson Books) Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (Doubleday)
Lesbian Fiction Big Bang Symphony by Lucy Jane Bledsoe (University of Wisconsin Press) Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle by Zelda Lockhart (LaVenson Press) Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall (House of Anansi), also a finalist in the transgender fiction category Homeschooling by Carol Guess (PS Publishing) Inferno by Eileen Myles (OR Books)
The winners will be honored at a gala held at the School of Visual Arts in New York City on May 26.
In the video below, Lesbian Fiction finalist Eileen Myles discusses her nominated book.
The documentary Behind Those Books, written by Kaven Brown, directed by Mills Miller, and featuring interviews with Terry McMillan, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Kevin Powell, is billed as "the first and only comprehensive documentation, on film, of the urban literature genre, giving viewers a raw and uncut look inside the emerging industry." It will premiere May 28 at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City.
Last night the National Book Critics Circle celebrated its favorite books of 2010, announcing National Book Critics Circle Award winners in poetry, fiction, and autobiography. C. D. Wright took home the prize in poetry forOne With Others (Copper Canyon), a work of verse journalism investigating the Civil Rights movement in the poet's native Arkansas.
"She’s developed a new form, if not a new genre," says NBCC board member Craig Morgan Teicher in a review of Wright's book, "that allows for a new
blending of fact and feeling, one which could help us tell our stories
going forward, if only we’ll let it school us."
In fiction, Jennifer Egan won in fiction for A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf). Board member Collette Bancroft says of Egan's time-leaping novel-in-stories, "A Visit From the Goon Squad wraps big themes—art and its
relationship with technology, the fluid nature of the self, love and its
loss—in stories with a satiric edge, believable but never predictable
characters, and a range of styles masterfully rendered."
In autobiography, Darin Strauss won for Half a Life (McSweeney's Books), a memoir of the author's life after a devastating accident involving one of his high school classmates. "What might have been exploitative instead feels important, and dearly won," says board member Karen Long.
In the video below, filmed last week, Wright reads from her winning volume at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.
Each year the University of Oregon Libraries hosts an Edible Book Festival featuring examples of edible artwork that "must be made from consumable components and reflect the concept of 'the book' through the use of text, form, or literary inspiration." The next Edible Book Festival will be held on March 31. Check out similar events at Duke, Xavier, the University of Puget Sound, and other schools across the country.
