Wired Magazine and the Challenges of Contemporary Literature
Thanks to Literary License for drawing our attention to this piece by Bruce Sterling in Wired detailing eighteen challenges for contemporary literature. This is a pretty broad set of challenges, ranging from some more content based questions (“Literature is language-based and national; contemporary society is ...
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Man Gone Down Wins IMPAC Prize
As announced yesterday, Michael Thomas has won this year’s International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel Man Gone Down (Grove). Here’s the description from the Grove website: A beautifully written, insightful, and devastating first novel, Man Gone Down is about a young black father of three in ...
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And One Last Piece of Awful News
At least this post isn’t about a bookstore/publisher closing—instead it’s about the absolute grossness of corporations: On Sunday, a Bookseller story by Victoria Gallagher reported that “sources” were saying “Penguin is believed to have signed an exclusive deal with W H Smith” bookstores to be ...
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The Latest Publishing Casualty
I’m just chock full of good news today: Arcade Publishing, the independent literary house founded by the late publishing legend Richard Seaver, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A petition for relief was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York on June 4 by Jeannette ...
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The Good News, The Horrible News
This is already old news, but last week Jessica Stockton Bagnulo announced she had signed the lease and Greenlight Bookstore now has an official address: 86 Fulton Street in Fort Greene. If all goes according to plan, the store will officially open in September. It’s great to see this finally happen . . . For as long ...
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Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Symposium
The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Symposium (participants pictured above) took place earlier this week, and was one of the most interesting symposiums I’ve ever attended. The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize—which goes to the best translation from German published in the past year—was awarded ...
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REX at the Rex: A Conversation with José Manuel Prieto and Esther Allen
Where: Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter St., San Francisco Co-Sponsored by PEN West and the Center for the Art of Translation REX is a sophisticated literary game rife with allusions to Proust and Borges, set in a world of wealthy Russian expats and mafiosos in western Europe. It is the final volume in a trilogy of novels that ...
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