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Posts Tagged ‘Anne Stameshkin’

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Scibona wins NYPL's Young Lions Fiction Award

by Anne Stameshkin

Congratulations to Salvatore Scibona for winning the 9th annual Young Lions Fiction Award!! Sponsored by the New York Public Library, this $10,000 prize honors a writer who, at age 35 or younger, has made “an indelible impression on the world of literature” with a novel or story collection. The four finalists were: Jon Fasman, The Unpossessed City Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances (FWR’s review coming soon) Sana Krasikov, One More Year (see FWR’s review here) Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey And check out Fiction Writers Review this weekend for an interview with Salvatore Scibona; a review of The […]


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join the effort to save Shaman Drum and the GLLAC

by Anne Stameshkin

An Open Letter from Julie Ellison The following message was originally posted here and has been making the rounds as an email. Please refer other book lovers and writers, especially those in the Ann Arbor area, to this announcement and the letter it links to. Dear Friends and Colleagues, I am writing to let you know about a collective effort to save Shaman Drum Bookshop, now incorporated as the Great Lakes Literary Arts Center (GLLAC). The statement (click here to download the PDF) explains the reasoning behind a new coalition to preserve Shaman Drum. Those of us involved in this […]


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when will they ever learn?

by Anne Stameshkin

There have been scads of articles about the evils of high-stakes gambling by book publishers–the doling out of huge advances to one or two would-be-blockbusters while investing little in the rest of the list. The logic behind this impulse isn’t hard to understand: when a Big Book hits the jackpot, the publisher does, too–and in theory, the rest of a publisher’s list and personnel would reap the benefits. But even the glorious success of of one book can set unrealistic expectation for future titles–and rather than supplementing resources for less popular books, a Hit might wind up making those books […]


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NBCC Awards

by Anne Stameshkin

The National Book Critics Circle announced 2008’s award winners on Thursday: Fiction: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, trans. by Natasha Wimmer (FSG) Poetry: Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler (FSG) and Half the World in Light by Juan Felipe Herrera (U of Arizona Pr) Criticism: Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter by Seth Lerer (U of Chicago Pr) Biography: The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French (Knopf) Autobiography: My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar (Algonquin) Nonfiction: […]


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TED talks: writers on writing

by Anne Stameshkin

Celeste just turned me on to TED — or Technology, Entertainment, Design; on their website, this organization offers videos of more than 200 lectures by VIPs from a wide swath of industries and arts. Here’s a sampling of talks by writers: – Dave Eggers describes his experience working with 826 Valencia, encouraging creative people everywhere to get involved with public schools. – Amy Tan explores “where creativity is hiding.” – Isabel Allende discusses passion, creativity, and definitions of feminism. – Elizabeth Gilbert gives a lecture on “genius” and creativity.


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more (and more and more) e-reader and Kindle links

by Anne Stameshkin

In the latest The Quarterly Conversation, William Patrick Wend’s “Intro to E-Lit: How Electronic Literature Makes Printed Literature Richer” discusses N. Katherine Hayles’ book Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary and defends e-publishing. Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo loves the Kindle but fears it’s bad news for the current publishing industry. Booksquare argues that the text-to-speech verdict, supposedly a win by Authors Guild (who aggressively pursued this issue), might (ironically) benefit Amazon the most in the end. Check out her earlier post on e-book pricing. The latest Kindle news is at Kindlebuzz, and folks are talking about nothing else at KindleBoards.




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