More Mo Yan and the "C" Word
Mo Yan accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature the other day, giving this acceptance speech: In the fall of 1984 I was accepted into the Literature Department of the PLA Art Academy, where, under the guidance of my revered mentor, the renowned writer Xu Huaizhong, I wrote a series of stories and novellas, ...
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Canvas.
Over at Full Stop, Scott Cheshire has a lot of love for Benjamin Stein’s The Canvas, including this review: The Canvas is loosely based on the account of Binjamin Wilkomirski, author of Fragments (1995), a tremendously popular Holocaust memoir; like Minksy’s story it was proven to be a fabrication. But when I say ...
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Thursday Is Fun Day!
The number one question I’m asked by people interested in Open Letter/publishing is how we find our books. We do a lot of reading of catalogs and reviews online, talking to people, getting recommendations, and, most importantly, receiving submissions over the interwebs. Well, like this one: Subject: QUERY Its All ...
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Riffle. Oh, Riffle
So, a couple weeks ago, Publishers Weekly ran an article on Riffle, asking whether it could be “the Pinterest for Books.” A social media tool powered by Odyl, Riffle takes its name from the word for thumbing through a book.1 And that’s exactly the sense of discovery that Odyl founder and CEO Neil Baptista ...
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GoodReads! Oh, GoodReads
First off, I want to point out that our new GoodReads Giveaway is now live. Between now and December 15th, you can enter to win one of fifteen copies of 18% Gray by Zachary Karabashliev that we’re going to be giving away. By now, you probably know the drill, but if you’re a GoodReads member (and if not, why not?) ...
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Open Letter Author on Open Letter Author Love
As we mentioned back when it was awarded, Dubrakva Ugresic was awarded the Jean Améry Award for Essay Writing this past fall. As it turned out, fellow Open Letter author, Arnon Grunberg,- whose Tirza should be on everyone’s must read list for the spring, gave a speech about Dubravka at the awards ceremony during the ...
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Quarterly Conversation #30 [The Reviews]
The reviews are one of the standard features in every issue of Quarterly Conversation. and there’s a ton of great pieces in this new issue. These are just a few of the highlights. Taylor Davis-Van Atta on Stig Sæterbakken’s Siamese, translated from the Norwegian by Sean Kinsella and Self-Control, translated ...
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