Despite the boycott, Preeta Samarasan travels to Sri Lanka for the Galle Literary Festival and finds friends, eager young writers, and a love for a country that reminds her powerfully of her native Malaysia. She reflects on the power of free speech in a country recovering from many years of civil war.
A few weeks back, Michael sent me a pretty sweet list of “Words That Don’t Exist in English” from Matt Griswold’s blog. They include: Waldeinsamkeit (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods. Esprit de l’escalier (French): The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said. Literally translated: “the spirit of the staircase.” Laced with Love has a round-up of words that don’t exist in English as well#151;some overlap, but one I particularly enjoyed was: Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): To borrow objects one by one from a […]
On Wednesday, Anthony Doerr was awarded the 2010 Story Prize for his collection Memory Wall. The ceremony also honored two finalists, Yiyun Li and Suzanne Rivecca. Reports the Story Prize’s blog: Anthony Doerr, for instance, in answer to a question about the preponderance of older women in Memory Wall, talked about how his grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, came to live with his family when he was in high school and how, in his teenage self-absorption, he had been somewhat oblivious to her condition. Yiyun Li discussed how her characters stubbornly resist being swept along by the tide of history—even […]
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 […]
Where do film noir, post-communist Bulgarian fiction, and black comedy intersect? In Vladislav Todorov’s searing noir-meets-social-commentary novel, Zift. Contributing Editor Steven Wingate and Todorov discuss poisonings, the resurgence of narrative fiction in post-communist Eastern Europe, the idea that “many people enjoyed spying on their neighbors” for the state, and much more.
My sister, a engineering professor, is writing a book about how to encourage women to pursue engineering. She plans to self-publish the book through Lulu, since the print on demand strategy makes perfect sense for the specialized audience for such a book. And because I’ve worked in publishing, she asks me a lot of questions about layout and format and marketing—topics that are, sadly, way out of my field of expertise. In self-publishing, everything is up to the author: the size of the book, binding type, even the font. That can make for a bewildering self-publishing experience, and the best […]
Having post-holiday Kindle regret? Microcosm Publishing, of Portland, OR, will trade $189 worth of paper books for your used Kindle. (Via.) Says the publisher’s website: Beginning RIGHT NOW you can bring in your Christmas Kindle to the Microcosm store in Portland (636 SE 11th) and trade it in for its worth in new or used books and zines! That’s right! Why let fad technology kill print when you can take a stand and fill up your shelves in the process. (Don’t worry, we won’t tell your parents.) And make sure to bring a friend to help you carry all your […]
This week, we bring you not a traditional journal but Fresh Pressed, the biannual newsletter from the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. CLMP is an organization dedicated to serving independent literary publishers, offering a biweekly e-newsletter, a literary journal circulation database template to help lit mags manage their records, workshops and roundtables, various online resources, and several publications. The current edition (February 2011) of Fresh Pressed contains audio versions of panels and workshops from AWP 2011 and CLMP’s Fall 2010 LWC}NYC (Literary Writers Conference in New York City). Topics include: “Editor as Mentor: Literary Magazines and Emerging Writers” (a […]
Today, March 2, is Read Across America Day, in honor of Dr. Seuss‘s birthday. (Really—here’s the official presidential proclamation.) Funded by the NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education, the event’s goal is simple: to motivate children to read. Says the event’s website: The First Lady and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel welcome a star-studded lineup of readers and 400 local schoolchildren to the Library of Congress today for the national kickoff of NEA’s Read Across America. Who’s grabbed a hat to read with the Cat? Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Jessica Alba, Superbowl champion Donald Driver, Top Chef host […]
Recently a friend turned me on to Ravens & Chimes, whose first album happens to be titled “Reichenbach Falls”—which, of course, is a reference to the famous site where Sherlock Holmes “died” only to be resurrected by Arthur Conan Doyle after years of reader heckling. This sparked a bit of my own sleuthing on the interwebs. Bookride has a pretty comprehensive list of band names inspired by literature, including: The Grateful Dead (originally a book by Gordon Hall Geroud, though the band claims it was ‘the outcome of a night of stoned lexicology’) Steppenwolf (Holla, Herr Hesse!) Tears for Fears […]
