This Week in Writing

• On March 28^th, Barry Harbaugh wrote “Yes, Book Editors Edit,” his response to the buzzing essay collection “MFA vs NYC.” The collection, published by n+1, features work from writers, professors, publicists, agents—but no book editors.
• Linton Weeks at NPR has written an essay titled “Vladimir Putin is Right Out Of A Russian Novel.” In the piece, Weeks posits that Putin, in his reign, “has chosen [to follow] the Dostoevskian tradition.”
• A printed edition of Wikipedia is in the works—and it would span more than one million pages in total. Seems like a worthless idea to me. Listen to NPR's talking points (3/30) here.
• On April 1^st, Gmail celebrated its 10 year anniversary. Here, Time's Harry McCracken rehashes the service's revolutionary history.
• In The Believer's March/April issue, Anisse Gross interviews filmmaker/screenwriter Mary Harron about the role of women in film. Gross discusses her writing process and her views of modern feminism. Gross wrote and directed several films, including I Shot Andy Warhol, and American Psycho.
• The Boston Review posted “Cloud of Mexico Pork” this week (4/1), a poem from Robert Pinksy. The piece is made up of a list of “trigger words” which government surveillance teams use to monitor citizens' web searches.
• The New Yorker's Emily Nussbaum explores the ethics behind TV writing in her piece “The Great Divide” (4/3). The article focuses on the polarizing humor of “All in the Family,” recalling: “One side felt that the show satirized bigotry; the other argued that it was bigotry, and that all those vaudevillian yuks and awws were merely camouflage for Archie’s ugly words.” Nussbaum's piece also questions the show's impact on modern sitcom writing.   

~Sophie Opich

This Week in Writing

Photo courtesy Reuters via BBC.

• In a progressive move, the Vatican Library announced (3/22) its plans to digitize its collection of ancient handwritten manuscripts. The long-term goal of the project is to make 40 million pages of documents available online. Some of these texts contain important historical works in math, science, law and medicine.
• On the 22^nd, President Jimmy Carter sat down with Diane Rehm of NPR to discuss his new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power. In the interview, Carter discusses ongoing abuse of American women and our country's fight for human rights. Carter is 89 years old.
• Alice Munro was the first Canadian woman to win a Nobel prize in literature. On the 24^th, the author was honored with a special coin inscribed with a passage from her short story Messenger.
• Strand magazine announced Tuesday (3/25) that it will feature a previously unpublished/ long lost short story written by Tennessee Williams titled “Crazy Night.” Read CNN's piece on the discovery here. Williams died in 1983.
• Editors at The American Scholar put together a list of what they claim may be the Ten Best Sentences (3/27). It's a good read – and it reminds me of this piece from last summer posted by The Atlantic, wherein some of today's most acclaimed writers list their favorite opening sentences. Jonathan Franzen lists Kafka, and other surprises.

~Sophie Opich

This Week in Writing

(Source: Random House)

• Since the start of February, more than 300 Anne Frank-related books have been destroyed in libraries across Tokyo. In an announcement last Friday (2/28), the Israeli embassy's deputy chief of mission stated: “I think everyone understands that it's a single act that doesn't represent Japanese people.” The embassy will donate replacements for the books, including several copies of Anne Frank's diary. Read more here.

• At the Oscars on Sunday night (3/2), John Ridley won his first Academy Award, Best Adapted Screenplay, for his film “12 Years as a Slave.” The story is an adaptation of Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir of the same name. Ridley is the second African-American writer to win this award.

• Justin Kaplan, literary biographer and editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, died Sunday. Kaplan received a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards for his work. Listen to a 1992 interview with Kaplan and NPR's Terry Gross here.

• Denis Johnson's new story “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden,” was published Monday (3/3) in the New Yorker. Read the story here, and an interview with Johnson and the New Yorker's fiction editor Deborah Treisman here.

• On Thursday (3/6), George Saunders's collection Tenth of December won The Story Prize – a $20,000 award. In a statement, judges wrote: “This book is very funny and very sad.” Read the title story here, and find an interview with Saunders in Issue 27 of Hayden's Ferry Review.

• T Magazine shared photos and interviews with writers about their at-home work spaces and writing stations. See more here, from Colson Whitehead, Joyce Carol Oates, and more. 

 ~Sophie Opich

Hayden's Ferry Review 53--Departure

Starting today, all subscriptions and sample issue orders will begin with our Departure-themed 53rd, heading to your mailbox soon!

If you are in the Phoenix area, please come celebrate at our release party Dec. 2nd, 7:30 p.m., at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe.

FEATURING:

Poetry by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers • Staci R. Schoenfeld • Brian Tierney • Michael C. Peterson • John James • Michael Bazzett • Sandy Longhorn • Grace Bauer • Matt Morton • Christopher Kempf • Ray McManus • Benjamin Goldberg • Brandon Amico • Leslie Morris • Angela Voras-Hills • Lisa Hiton • Trent Nutting • P. Ivan Young • Mary Ellen Ballard • Michelle Turner • C Dylan Bassett • Emma Sovich • Geffrey Davis • Montreux Rotholtz • Spencer Wise • Brianna Noll • Sandra Simonds

Fiction by Matthew Baker • Carol Guess & Kelly Magee • Michael Malan • Ruth Joffre • John Holliday • J. A. Tyler • Lucas Southworth

Nonfiction by Tim Keppel • Chelsea Biondolillo

International selections by Efraín Bartolomé, translated by Kevin Brown • Gonçalo M. Tavares, translated by Rhett McNeil • Patricio Pron, translated by Kathleen Heil • Yousef el Qedra, translated by Yasmin Snounu, Edward Morin & George Khoury • Kristín Eiríksdóttir, translated by Christopher Burawa • Kim Kyung Ju, translated by Jung Hi-Yeon & Jake Levine • Zakariya Amataya, translated by Cutter Streeby • Edmundo Paz Soldán, translated by Kirk Nesset • Maria Alekhina of Pussy Riot, translated by Anatoly Kudryavitsky.

AWP Intro Award winners Kelsey Ronan (fiction) • Danielle Weeks (poetry)

Art by Carlos Jiménez Cahua (cover) • Scott Conarroe • Gabriela Vainsencher • Sasha Bezzubov & Jessica Sucher • Karolina Karlic • Chris Engman • Soledad Manrique

and an interview with Gabriela Vainsencher by Allegra Hyde

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

News Around the Net

The Awl has an interesting series on Bad Influences.  I particularly enjoyed The Writer with the Pink Velvet Pants.


Sarah Gerard writes an excellent piece on of the recent translation of Clarice Lispector's novel, The Passion According to G.H. in Bomblog.  (Lispector is one of my favorite Brazilian authors).


Today in literary history, 1964, the Supreme Court overturned obscenity ruling on Henry Miller's The Tropic of Cancer 


How well do you know James Joyce and Ulysses?


Love poems and wildflowers in June.

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Happy 108th birthday to Dr. Seuss!

The new book JK Rowling is writing is so in-demand that there are stories like this one that are trying to figure out what it might be about. (Why not just turn older Harry Potter into like a Sherlock Holmes character who solves mysteries? Solid gold.)

Want to know what The Wasteland would look like if it was written by LOLcats? Me neither, but here it is anyway.

A couple lists of what David Foster Wallace thought were notable words.

A little old, but since it would have been DFW's 50th birthday last week, here's another. Jon Franzen disagreed with DFW, believing that nonfiction needs to be entirely nonfiction, with DFW possibly being a little more liberal about it. For the record, I'm entirely in DFW's camp for this one.

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Celebrating Charles Dickens's 200th birthday in London with Slate.

The hero of Dave Eggers last book, Zeitoun, is having some serious legal problems. This may put a wrench in the film adaption.

Here's Sylvia Plath reading Lady Lazarus.

From the bad ideas (or lack of new ideas) department, here's this. Can't we just leave The Watchmen alone as an awesome book? It's not too late.

Tolkien fans, another Tolkien fan put together a complete genealogy of every character in Middle-earth. Not every character in Lord of the Rings. Every character in Middle-earth!

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F. Scott Fitzgerald's advice on life to his daughter. Apparently he didn't find flies as irritating as I do.

With the turning of the New Year, most of James Joyce's work moved into the public domain, ending Joyce's grandson's very possessive reign over the writer's estate.

For the third straight year, the mysterious Poe Toaster hasn't showed up at the writer's grave to leave three roses and a half bottle of cognac on the Poe's birthday. This after showing up every year for seven decades.

Instead of a new novel, Cormac McCarthy decided to deliver a screenplay to his agents, to their surprise.

Breaking the Amazon-buying habit.

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Christopher Hitchens died today at 62.

How about a little bit of A Christmas Carol to rouse a little holiday spirit? Even better with Dickens's 200th birthday coming up in a couple of months. A recording of his great-granddaughter reading the Christmas classic for our entertainment.

Some offbeat gifts for the writers in our lives. Just in case you don't want to get them, you know, books. The bamboo keyboard is actually pretty cool (hint).

The Millions "Year in Reading" series continues to continue. Always worth checking out.

A 500 year old Latin poem (written by a woman) was just found in a 1561 edition of Chaucer in the rare books sections of the West Virginia University library. And the search is on for who this woman is.

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Linking to The Millions main page here to check out the entirely of their Year In Reading series (so far).

The 2011 Bad Sex in Fiction Award goes to... David Guterson (and an appropriate name, sans second T) for his recasting of the Oedipus myth. Congrats! I know you're very proud.

Amazon is attempting to lure authors into publishing their books 90 days early exclusively on the Kindle. With money.

Looks like a series of Watchmen prequel episodes are coming out. Alan Moore will not be involved. And I guess I'll just leave it at that.

A great essay here about all the "Best Of" lists we're overwhelmed with (especially this time of year), and how we measure literary excellence.

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The Millions is bringing back their "Year in Reading" series, the first post is by Jennifer Egan. There will be more as the month goes on.

Spy novelist Quentin Rowan, just caught in a huge plagiarism scandal, says he's addicted to plagiarism. Addicted! No word on whether this essay uses stolen works, yet.

Everyone loves some really harsh rejection letters sent to famous writers and not to us (for once).

David Milch recently signed a deal to adapt all of William Faulkner's work for HBO. Is it just me or would As I Lay Dying be pretty boring to watch?

Jack Kerouac's first novel, The Sea Is My Brother, is being published for the first time, nearly 70 years after it was written. Kerouac seemed not to be the biggest fan of it.

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The National Book Award winners have been announced. Congrats to all.

Authors who've never written a dud. As long as we're on the topic of complete subjectivity.

Good news, the missing books from the raid at Occupy Wall Street have been found. They were not thrown away. Also you get a tweet from the mayor of New York. I might be the last person under 80 who still doesn't know Twitter-speak.

Speaking of Twitter, how about Salman Rushdie venting his frustration about Facebook on Twitter, anyone interested in that? And for anyone who's wondering, no, Salman Rushdie did not become a 14 year old girl overnight.

So look whose book is The Rumpus's poetry book club selection for November. ASU's own.

Here some writers (including Junot Diaz and Philip Pullman) share their book collecting habits and show their libraries. And we get their top 10 books.

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Living in the future is so awesome.

The new class of Whiting Writers' Award winners were announced. Congrats to all on your new publicity and giant stack of cash.

The best time for writers to write. I would vote for never.

A slideshow of Sylvia Plath's very domestic drawings of houses, Ted Hughes, and a cow. The Ted Hughes one is actually very good.

Authors and their hobbies. From Franz Kafka's enormous collection of porn to Mark Twain's inventing a device to replace suspenders. Jonathan Franzen's bird watching obsession not mentioned, although it should be.

It's that time of year again. Get your caffeine ready.

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Awards season is coming around. The finalists for the National Book Award have been announced, and as per usual, they've nominated a lot of people I've never heard of.

On to someone I have heard of, the favorite for the award, Julian Barnes finally won the Booker for his novel The Sense of an Ending. It was his fourth time nominated.

This is a study about the dangers of reading on the toilet. Entertaining enough, but I'd like you to draw your attention to the section about Henry Miller, crapper reading connoisseur.

Amazon apparently likes the iPad way more than any of their Kindles.

NPR has a flow chart to navigate the 100 best scifi and fantasy books.

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The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to a Swedish poet who is, again, decidedly not Philip Roth.

The eastern hemisphere is none too happy about the choice either. Rightly so, it seems the Nobel has become a European only party with a splash of South America now and then.

Check out this slideshow of Simpsons literary references. Pretty comprehensive, but they left off my favorite.

The National Book Foundation has announced their 5 under 35 for this year. I didn't make it this year, but I still have 11 years to get there. Also, I have to write something. Wish me luck.

The future! This seems sufficiently lazy to me. Now I won't have to decide which books to read, and I don't have to get off my couch to read them.

Here's a small tour of Lovecraftian locales around New England, apparently the creepiest place on Earth.

For fear of sounding like a total dick, congrats to Tomas Transtromer for being awarded the Nobel Prize, he's had a great career.

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The MacArthur Grants for 2011 have been announced, the literary winners include two poets (one a former United States poet laureate) and a journalist.

George R.R. Martin crossed the one million Kindle ebooks sold mark, one of only ten who have done so thus far. He joins a list including Nora Roberts and James Patterson. Um, congrats!

Check out this gallery of Dickens characters. It was put together as part of a celebration of Dickens's 200th birthday, early next year.

When Kesey met Kerouac. Spoiler alert: they did not become best friends.

Borders closed forever and at least one of their employees was bitter enough to write this frustrated manifesto.

There's a new Silverstein book out. NPR has some of the poems in it.

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I'll match this guy's bitterness about the P&W MFA rankings with some bitterness of my own toward him for making fun of my program (San Marcos). I do agree that the rankings are sort of silly and that Columbia is better than it's ranked. But still, some serious sour grapes here.

On the other hand, here is a more rational response. Also not completely for the rankings system, but maybe they're not the dumbest thing in existence, either.

Neil Gaiman and a tweetathon for short stories!

Roald Dahl's writing shed needs to be saved. And one of you has to scrape together $790,000 to save it. Get on it!

The potential end for bookstores. Does anyone remember Blockbuster? Me neither.

Nostalgia and trying to save independent bookstores.

News Around the Net

This is like a yearly thing, but The Guardian is shocked by the Booker shortlist. Again.

In reaction to the Booker shortlist, Knopf has sped up the US release of Julian Barnes's novel, The Sense of an Ending.

Conan O'Brien's attempt to make old writers more accessible to young audiences. At least it's not a swimsuit competition.

This is a good essay, I'm excited about this little subcultural turn in literary fiction, but this has been happening for a while now, writers like Michael Chabon and Rick Moody have been doing combining lit fiction and genre for over a decade now.

Arthur C. Clarke predicting the future. He forgot one thing, we're going to the moon!

You're looking for a good place to eat? Well, why don't you let Cormac McCarthy help you with that.

News Around the Net

Check out this great website, dedicated to keeping underused words alive. Adopt a word and promise to use it in conversation as much as possible!

Should novelists be critics as well? It's a tough one. Who would know novels better? But a bad review always stinks of sour grapes.

The argument for not caring about literary awards. The reason we do care - probably because we like seeing books we like being liked by others, or if our book doesn't win, we also like pretending we have superior taste than the award-deciders. It's a win-win for fans.

We had a novel (then another, then another) by Lauren Conrad and I was okay, I didn't even comment on it. We had a novel by Hilary Duff, and I pointed it out, but I let it pass. But this. This cannot stand.

Here we go again. How many times do we have to go through this before people realize that The Great Gatsby will never be made into a successful movie? Those pretty sentences cannot be transplanted to the screen! Damn you, DiCaprio!

The new American Poet Laureate is Philip Levine.

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Hey, journalists, cut it out with the book writing already! Everyone else, I'm keeping my eye on you too.

Looks like Stephen King's Dark Tower series won't be made into a film after all. What's a couple years of work for nothing, Ron Howard?

We needed something about Harry Potter.

Shakespeare and celebrity impressions all in one. Sign me up.

Sometimes, a writer's most famous book is not their best book.