This Week in Writing

Mark Strand, Pulitzer-winning Poet Laureate in 1999, passed away at age 80 on Saturday due to liposarcoma (fat-cell cancer) at his daughter’s house in Brooklyn.

P.D. James, creator of Adam Dalgliesh Mysteries, also known as the “Queen of Crime,” dies at age 94 on Thursday in Oxford, England. Her first work, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962, and her last, Death Comes to Pemberley, in 2013.

Claudia Rankine’s book of poetry, Citizen: An Americal Lyric, is a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry.

According to reviewer Janet Maslin, Brock Clarke’s book The Happiest People in the World uses C.I.A. Operatives to drive the interest of readers.

Christopher Fowler’s new book Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart is the second book published in America this year by the author.

-Zalma Aguirre

This Week in Writing

Anne Rice, author of the recently published book Prince Lestat, is on book-signing tour. She stopped in Tempe, Arizona this weekend. Pick up her book at Changing Hands.

The National Book Award for fiction was granted to Phil Klay on Wednesday after the debut of his short story collection, Redeployment, based on his experience as a Marine in Iraq. 

Lisa Borgnes Giramonti published NovelInteriors: Living in Enchanted Rooms Inspired by Literature, bringing a modern look to living spaces from books: chairs from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, sofas described by Jane Austen in her novels, and library shelves described on Louisa May Alcott’s books. 

Viv Albertine, punk rocker member of The Slits, published her memoir Clash, Crash, Redemption. The book is based on her early life and career. 

R.A. Montgomery, c-founder of the publishing house Vermont Crossroads Press and author of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, dies at 78 years old. 

-Zalma Aguirre

This Week in Writing

The English translation of The Three-Body Problem, the first of a science fiction trilogy by Liu Cixin, was released on Tuesday by Tor Books.

Warsaw Ghetto, scrapbooks created by Polish author Jewish Mary Berg in 1945, disappeared in 1950, and have surfaced recently to shed light onto the Nazi genocide. The family of Ms. Berg has requested to cancel the auction of her diary.

Former President George W. Bush publishes 41: A Portrait of My Father, a biography about his father and being the second president in history to follow in the steps of his father.

David Ritz, author of celebrity biographies, will publish Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin this year. This is his second time working with Ms. Franklin since 1999.

Upcoming writer Atticus Lish publishes Preparation for The Next Life, about a love story lived in the shadows, based in part on his own experiences.


-Zalma Aguirre

This Week in Writing

Former Navy SEAL Team member Matt Bissonnette, writer of No Easy Day about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, is under criminal investigation for allegedly publishing classified material on his book.

Profile writer Clive James, current leukemia patient, continues to publish his poetry work as well as other projects such as Collected Poems scheduled to be published next year, aside from finishing another volume of memoirs.

Former New York Times reporter Jonathan P.Hicks, who covered all level politics in New York died at 58 years old at his home in Brooklyn from pancreatic cancer.

Published W.W. Norton & Company has published The Norton Anthology of World Religions with 4,200 pages to span 3,500 years of literary religion.

Station Eleven written by Emily St. John Mandel has been nominated for the 2014 National Book Award in fiction.


-Zalma Aguirre

This Week in Writing

Writer Michel Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White, has announced The Book of Strange New Things, will not only be his new but also his last novel to write and publish. 

Ali Mazrui, scholar and author of The Africans: A Triple Heritage passedaway on Oct. 12^th at 81 years old. 

Meshack Asare is the 2015 recipient of the NSK Neustadt Prize granted by World Literature Today, a magazine of the University of Oklahoma, making him the frist African to win the award for Children’s Literature.

Essayist, poet and translator Michael Hofmann will host a live Q&A on Thursday Oct. 30^th. Michael Hoffman has translated around 70 books from German to English, including Kafka’s multiple work, aside from Joseph Roth, Patrick Suskind and more, winning the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and English Arts Council grant.

Martha Weinman Lear, writer of medical memoir Heartsounds, comes out with a rueful epilogue about her own recent challenges with heart disease, Echoes of Heartsounds.  

-Zalma Aguirre

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

• The New Yorker published “How To Be a Good Bad American Girl” on the 6th. In it, Anna Holmes recalls the complexities and subversive behavior of two timeless literary super-heroines, Scout Finch and Harriet Welsch.
• The #TwitterFiction Festival began March 12: “Twitter is where the world tells its stories all day, every day.” Learn more here.
• On the 13th, the National Book Critics Circle announced their award winners for 2013, including works from Frank Bidart and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Read the full list here.
• On March 14, Nick Richardson at the London Review of Books posted a translation and analysis of the classic “Lorem Ipsum” placeholder text which, translated to English, reads “like extreme Mallarmé, or a Burroughsian cut-up, or a paragraph of Finnegans Wake.”
• Walter Dean Myers published an opinion article for the New York Times in on Sunday (3/15) asking: “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books?” Myers is the former Library of Congress Ambassador for Young People's Literature and the author of the YA bestseller “Monster.”
• Let Books Be Books is an online campaign that opposes books designated “for boys” or “for girls.” The Independent (3/16) says a good read is just that. 

~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