PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize ($25,000): To a fiction writer whose debut work, published in 2010, represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise. This year, the judges have chosen two winners to share the award.

• Susanna Daniel, Stiltsville (FWR interview here)
• Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (FWR interview here)
• Runner up: Teddy Wayne, Kapitoil
• Judges: Susan Cheever, Paul Harding, and Yiyun Li (FWR interview here)

PEN/W. G. Sebald Award for a Fiction Writer in Mid-Career ($10,000):To an author who has published at least three significant works of literary fiction.

• Aleksandar Hemon (FWR reviews of Hemon’s novel Love and Obstacles here, and of Best European Fiction 2010, edited by Hemon, here)
• Judges: Jill Ciment, Salvatore Scibona (FWR interview here), and Gary Shteyngart.

PEN Emerging Writers Award for Fiction ($1,660): One award to writer who has been published in a distinguished literary journal, but who has yet to publish a book-length work.

• Fiction winner: Smith Henderson (nominated by Hannah Tinti of One Story; FWR interview with Tinti here, and FWR review of Tinti’s novel The Good Thief here)
• Judges: Reif Larsen, David Lehman, and Robin Romm.

The longlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award has just come out, and here at FWR, we’re thrilled to have featured many of the writers on it in interviews, reviews, and essays, including:

• Anthony Doerr, for Memory Wall
• Danielle Evans, for Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
• Siobhan Fallon, for You Know When the Men Are Gone
• Alan Heathcock, for Volt
• Valerie Laken, for Separate Kingdoms
• Yiyun Li, for Golden Boy, Emerald Girl

Offered by the Munster Literature Centre, the 35,000-euro prize is the largest for a short story collection.  The shortlist will be announced in July.  In the meantime, click through above to learn more about the authors on the longlist and select your favorites!

Image Credit: Flickr

A few weeks back, I blogged about the AOL purchase of the Huffington Post and the questions and ethics of when writers choose to write for free.

Yesterday, GalleyCat reported that Visual Art Source publisher Bill Lasarow has ceased to post his content for free on the HuffPo site and calls for a more general bloggers’ strike. In Lasarow’s original manifesto on why he feels strongly about this issue, he states:

We think it is incumbent upon the many writers and bloggers to form a negotiating partnership with Huffington/AOL in order to pursue these and other important matters so as to professionalize this relationship. It is not entirely Ms Huffington’s fault that so many talented professionals have been willing to accept the company’s terms on an “in kind” basis. Surely most do so in the hopes of achieving their own fame and fortune thanks to the great exposure that Huffington Post potentially offers. Unfortunately, such participants are only complicit in a relationship that fails the ethical smell test.

With unionized labor a big topic in the news this week, and the general public scrutiny of who exactly is making a profit, Lasarow’s call feels very much in keeping with the zeitgeist. Organization: another path to professionalize the creation of content online?

Image Credit: Flickr

At 9 a.m. on the Saturday of AWP, I rallied for “When Should We Write for Free?” – a panel that, just like it sounds, featured writers discussing their own guidelines to answer that question. The panel gave insight into a marketplace that has rapidly grown accustomed to free content. There was much discussion during the audience Q&A about providing free content – mostly in the form of blogging – and folks mentioned the Huffington Post several times, since their bloggers are not paid.

Fast forward to last week, when the Huffington Post announced that AOL would acquire it for $315 million. Obviously someone is making money at the HuffPo, but do bloggers have a right to a share of the profits? Jason Linkins, a paid reporter at the HuffPo, wrote a response to the criticism of unpaid blogging that addressed the question of paid vs. unpaid directly:

Now, people often wonder: why would anyone blog for free, at a place that pays other contributors? Please note, that part of what “free” entitles you to is a freedom from “having to work.” No daily hours, no deadlines, no late nights, no weekends. You just do what you like when the spirit moves you.

To answer the question, “Why would someone make a free contribution to this business, knowing that it will, theoretically, enrich a whole other group of people?” you really need to ask the specific people who make those contributions.

He goes on to make the argument that the platform of the Huffington Post is compensation of a certain kind. No one forces you to blog for them, you make the is-it-worth-it? calculation and make the right decision for you. This is what the AWP panelists would likely class as the “gray area” of writing – a form of voluntary exploitation. You’re enriching others (in the case of the Huffington Post, quite handsomely), but you’re also agreeing to do it, presumably because it’s worth something to you. After all, cash is not always king, sometimes having an audience can connect you to people who know your name and will – in the future – pay to read your writing. These decisions are highly personal and individual – which is why I’m fascinated by where people draw the line. For example, we at FWR have done all our work pro-bono to date, from editor to contributor. So, all you writers, when do you write for free?

For the last several months, Harper’s staff, recently unionized, has been in conflict with the magazine’s publisher, John R. “Rick” MacArthur. The disagreements stem from various sources, which have been outlined in two recent articles in New York Magazine, here and here. In short: MacArthur is resistant to other avenues of revenue, including fund raising. Instead, having already cut the size and payroll of the editorial staff, which lost four senior editors and its web editor in 2010, MacArthur is now insisting that it’s necessary to lay off, immediately, two of the magazine’s most experienced editors, one of whom is the magazine’s main fiction editor.

So, Harper’s needs your help! In a bid to demonstrate the value of the Internet and the plausibility of fundraising and to forestall layoffs, the union of Harper’s magazine has created a pledge drive effort that ends on Monday. If you believe Harper’s is a creative, provocative, and intellectually stimulating magazine that brings us some of the finest literary journalism, essays, and fiction being written today, please take a moment to read, sign, and pledge what you can to help save Harper’s Magazine.

From the petition:

We have shown numerous means by which Harper’s Magazine might cut costs and increase revenue without laying off its most skilled and experienced editors, and in particular we have urged the magazine’s foundation to raise funds from outside sources. This possibility has been rejected by the labor lawyers representing John R. “Rick” MacArthur, our publisher. They argue that fund-raising takes time, and that there is no time to be wasted in reducing our editorial staff by two union members.

Yet according to a Harper’s editor, as of Friday night at midnight, the second day of the drive, Harper’s had 700 pledges totaling about $40,867. An article about the situation by Jeff Bercovici in Forbes notes that most of the pledges are for amounts “of $50 or less. (Generally speaking, the broader the donor base, the better, since people who give once are likely to do so again.)”

MacArthur told Forbes magazine via a spokeswoman:

“For better or for worse, I am the best guarantor of the editorial and political independence of Harper’s Magazine. Our readers know that our financial independence results in uncompromised, quality journalism and writing. I don’t want to take money from people of modest incomes, and I certainly don’t want to accept corporate or foundation money that, too often, comes with strings attached.”

But does opening their doors to a web presence and fund raising truly undermine Harper’s quality, as MacArthur suggests? For instance, the Harper’s staff has argued that The Atlantic has reinvented itself without compromising integrity by establishing an online presence. Might Harper’s also expand its readership by reinventing itself on the web? Currently, online subscribers to the print magazine have access to the online content.

Please Sign the Petition here: Save Harper’s Magazine.

You can also read the letter signed by 84 contributors to and friends of Harper’s, including George Saunders, Zadie Smith, and Barbara Ehrenreich, asking MacArthur to reconsider the layoffs.They write: “We truly appreciate the space Harper’s Magazine has provided for our work and the generosity and commitment you have demonstrated over the past three decades. But we fear that in a publishing climate as precarious as this one, acrimonious staff relations and sustained losses of editorial experience can imperil any magazine.”

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For some background about the situation, including the staff’s recent unionization and attempts to make Harper’s more profitable, accessible, and timely by establishing an online presence, you can read these stories from New York Magazine:

And please sign, pledge, and pass it on! You can also join the cause on Facebook.

Image Credit: United Nations, via Flickr

Haitian Literature Is a Living Art: Jeffrey Brown of the PBS NewsHour and Thomas Spear, a scholar of Halitian literature and a professor of French at City University of New York, discuss the past 200 years of vibrant, strong Haitian literary tradition. They explore writing by Gary Victor, Jacques Stephen Alexis, Rene Philoctete and Edwidge Danticat and how they navigate issues of class, politics, the diaspora, and contemporary Haitian life in their fiction.

Haiti Noir: Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat has written of her mother country, and the immigrant experience, over the past two decades. She’s published moving pieces in The New Yorker about family lost, and the state of Haiti a year after the earthquake, “A Little While” and “A Year and a Day,” respectively. Danticat also edited an anthology of 18 writers, Haiti Noir, published last month by Akashic Books. Poets & Writers contributing editor Kevin Nance has a great piece about the collection, you can read here.

Last week, Frontline aired a documentary about the island nation, a year after the disaster, called “The Quake.” The program puts into context the huge political, economic and societal challenges that face Haiti now, extending beyond the immediate havoc wreaked by the earthquake to the state of the country before disaster hit. The website, where you can watch the full documentary, also includes perspectives on how the country can continue to rebuilt in “The Way Forward.”

Eyewitness testimony about the earthquake and its after-effects is still being recorded and it will likely take years before the full weight of the effects are felt in the literature and art of Haiti. But I hope in the meantime, we continue – through collections like Haiti Noir – to support Haiti by reading her writers, remembering her struggles, and listening to her stories.

Image Credit: Flickr

Let them read (old) books!
Though beautiful books draw my eye, the trump card for me will always be the words on the page. I love books for the story, which means I keep reading my coffee-warped copy of Blood Meridian and can’t part with that Lee K. Abbott collection that leaped into the bath. Public domain appeals to my lit-for-all ideals (of course, when the writer is long past needing the funds to fuel her work). Via GalleyCat, I found an annual list of the authors making their “debut” on COMMUNIA’s Public Domain Day (January 1). Unfortunately, according to TechDirt, even though F. Scott Fitzgerald and Leon Trotsky entered the public domain elsewhere in the world, nothing entered the public domain in the United States due to copyright extensions.

Friends, Romans, countrymen – lend me your e-books.
An added perk to my brother and his globe-trotting Kindle: books on Kindle can now be loaned. You can even arrange to share books for 14-days with strangers through GalleyCat’s Kindle Lending Discussion Board. I expect various other e-book formats will jump on this bandwagon, as this has long been voiced as one of the downsides of electronic vs. ink-and-paper books.

Libraries that download
So many public libraries around the country have digital media – from e-books to audio books to music – available for download, yours may very well be one of them. The NYPL, my local stalwart, has a great list of resources (over 30,000). libraries that have digital sharing. A quick perusal of The Chicago Public Library’s digital offerings turned up an audio version of Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories and e-books ranging from Y.A. to McCarthy’s Cities of the Plain and Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. Libraries have also banded together to form a consortium of digital resources, as many Ohio regional branches have done with the Digital Downloads project.

University Collections Online
Last, but not least, not everyone can afford to travel to the great library collections of the world, so many libraries are bringing them to you. Granted, you won’t be able to smell the dust on those vellum manuscripts, and no centuries-lost letters will fall out of the pages of Meriwether Lewis’ diary, but if you’re short on airfare funds, this may be the next best thing. I know The Newberry Library, where I used to work, has been scanning many of their 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages and 500,000 maps, as part of a massive digitization project. You can find some of those scanned items, here. About a month ago, Harvard’s Berkman Center announced a digital public library planning initiative. Libraries around the country have long recognized the trend toward digital formats, and I’m guessing the next decade will hold some exciting changes as they rise to the challenge.

My only question: if you drop a Kindle in the bath, can it still be salvaged with a hair dryer?

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These jobs can bring irregular paychecks, uncertain hours, and isolation. Creative people may also have higher rates of mood disorders; about 9% reported an episode of major depression in the previous year.

This is by no means new territory, there’s long been a body of study around the artistic teperment and depression, including Kay Redfield Jamison’s article “Manic Depressive Illness and Creativity” from Scientific American (1997). Knowing these things, that as writers we may be more isolated and face more uncertainty in work and life, are there strategies available to help combat depression? Obviously, depression is a serious condition that requires a physician’s care, but as a preemptive measure, I’m always on the lookout for ways to build community.

Sometimes I find getting out of the house to work with a friend at a coffee shop, or joining a writing group, provides a much-needed dose of perspective, as well as encouragement. What are some ways you have found community or built a writing routine that works?

Don’t call Paul Vidich the Mayor of Storyville. He prefers Matchmaker.

That’s because Storyville is less about Vidich, its creator, than his application’s ambitious plan to “bring together writers and readers.”

As you might imagine, Storyville is focused solely on the short story. Exclusive to owners of iPhones and iPads, the application promises to deliver one story every week, for which subscribers must pay $4.99 for a six-month subscription. In the end, this means Storyville’s residents will end up paying less than a quarter per story.

Vidich promises they won’t be just any stories. The Storyville editorial team is focused on stories from newly, or soon-to-be published collections, as well as on rescuing lost shorts from forgotten collections, securing stories that have fallen from the literary canon by negotiating 2nd-serial, electronic rights from every major publisher in hopes of republishing them for the Storyville audience. The publishers are, of course, delighted. With marketing budgets for collections already slim due to low sales, a decision that only compounds low sales further, many readers simply don’t know where to find great stories in the marketplace.

The Storyville App sets out to solve this problem by selecting the best stories from collections and republishing them, once weekly, to an audience that will come to appreciate not having to “look” for stories they’ll love. Vidich—not just town Matchmaker, but maybe also its Architect and Curator—has streamlined the experience for readers: rather than require individual per-story micro-transactions, users subscribe, sitting back comfortably as the stories flow in; and rather than overwhelm with hundreds and thousands of author and story options, one high-quality tale will download to their mobile device every week, automatically, pre-chosen across a broad spectrum of tastes and types to ensure readers are exposed to the best of the best across all genres and time periods.

No ratings. No reviews. No purchase decisions. Storyville represents its icon well. Its simplicity is reminiscent of an earlier time.

There may be no more qualified candidate to jailbreak the short-story than Vidich, who has performed similar feats in the music industry. Before joining the Board of Directors at Poets and Writers, Vidich spent nineteen years handling worldwide strategy and business development at Warner Music Group, a role that put him at the table with Steve Jobs to negotiate the terms of the iTunes Music Store. Vidich was the first executive in the music industry to trust Jobs with his company’s cadre of artists—but not before helping design Apple’s DRM program and actually suggesting the $.99-cent model, a price point the rest of the industry quickly adopted. Vidich, who has always been passionate about writing, received his MFA from Rutgers-Newark in 2009 and has pursued writing ever since. “Storyville brings together my passion for writing and literature and experiences in technology,” Vidich told me over the phone. “I’ll be happy if we just break-even.”

It was not surprising, then, to hear Vidich describe short story collections in the musical terms of his past—“A collection is kind of like a music album. Twelve cuts, of which there are three or four great ones.” He’s built Storyville to not only expose those “great” stories but promote the larger collections that house them. Like the iTunes store, Storyville allows readers to purchase collections with a single click. It’s all in service of talented short-story authors whose work might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

For Vidich, there’s room to service those stories that do go noticed as well. Storyville plans to expand the experience of a story by including an author’s notes on what inspired his or her tale—the story behind the story. Think of this as the “bonus track” or “album art”—an exclusive inside-look for Storyville community members. And releasing on Apple devices has allowed Vidich and his partners to focus further on optimizing their users’ experience. Not only will an easy-to-use user interface categorize stories by author, title and chronological release, push notifications and badges will alert readers when new stories have downloaded. One-button sharing will make posting these reading lists to friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter simple and intuitive. “Book are present goods as you experience them, but they become a social good as you want to share the experience. Stories aren’t shared, but comments on them are,” said Vidich. “Stories are not technical. The tech is for distribution. The essence is in the imagination and human spirit.”

Nothing may communicate this as well as the name of the application. While “Storyville” lends itself to the craft it champions, as well as the community it aspires to create, Vidich explained that it also refers to “Storyville,” the original red light district of New Orleans, a neighborhood known as much for its edgy business practices as its dodgy, drifter characters. “It’s a place where dreams, anxieties and love played out,” Vidich explained. “To me it all represented a meaningful way to capture what stories are all about.”

It appears Vidich, in looking for meaningful ways to represent his endeavor, never once looked in a mirror. As a story of reinvention himself—jumping industries from music to literature, singles to stories, businessman to author and back again, champion of the $.99-cent micro-transaction to the $4.99 subscription—he is a perfect representation for how Storyville hopes to reinvent how readers discover short stories and the authors who compose them.

Figment is an online community to create, discover, and share new reading and writing. Follow your literary obsessions. Find fans for your work. Read the latest by your favorite authors. Vote up the best stories. Embrace your inner book nerd. Read. Write. Procrastinate. Repeat. Whatever you’re into, from sonnets to mysteries, from sci-fi stories to cell phone novels, you can find it on Figment.

In some ways, Figment sounds like a cloud-edited literary journal, and reminds me a bit of sites like Shelfari – only with content, not just reading lists. The NYTimes article says the website is geared toward teenagers – so, very early writers – but I didn’t (immediately) spot this caveat on the Figment site. There is definitely something to be said for editors and the curated lit mag, but the idea of sharing writing and connecting with readers online – in a centralized spot – is intriguing. All this assumes that you’re not actually trying to sell a copy of your story, but perhaps such sites will provide a portal to readers actually paying for one in the future. What do you think? Is there a time and a place for giving readers a taste of writing, in order to build an audience?