Poets & Writers Blogs

This week two literary organizations with an interest in writing and social justice honored authors with an array of awards. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the PEN American Center's Literary Awards recognized the work of writers including Anne Carson, Don DeLillo, Dave Eggers, Marilyn Hacker, and Marlon James.

James won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in fiction, given in recognition of a work that promotes global understanding, for his novel The Book of Night Women (Riverhead Books), and Eggers was awarded the prize in nonfiction for Zeitoun (McSweeney's Books). Each received ten thousand dollars. The runners up, who each received one thousand dollars, are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for her story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (Knopf) and, in nonfiction, Justine Hardy for In the Valley of Mist (Free Press).

"From religious discrimination and immigration to racism and xenophobia, this year’s winners tackle challenging issues which are too often debated with sound bites and rhetoric only,” said Sharon Rab, chair of the prize, which will be presented on November 7 in Dayton, Ohio. “With wisdom, grace, and humanity, these books deliver much-needed relief from the political discourse, offering light instead of heat, and hope rather than despair.”

Over on the east coast, PEN American Center awarded Pulitzer Prize–winner Paul Harding received the thirty-five-thousand-dollar PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers for his debut novel, Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press). The twenty-five-thousand-dollar PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction went to Don DeLillo, and Susan Choi won the ten-thousand-dollar award for a midcareer fiction writer, the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Marilyn Hacker won the five-thousand-dollar PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, given to recognize a distinguished body of work.

Receiving three thousand dollars each are Anne Carson, who won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her translation from the Greek of An Oresteia (Faber and Faber), and Michael Henry Heim, who won the PEN Translation Prize for his translation from the Dutch of Wonder by Hugo Claus (Archipelago Books). The one-thousand-dollar Open Book Award (formerly the Beyond Margins Award) in poetry went to Sherwin Bitsui for his collection Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press).

The PEN Literary Award winners will be feted on October 13 in New York City.

In the video below, Eggers discusses the experience of the New Orleans man and his family whose story he adapted in his winning book.

From Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse to Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, James Joyce's The Dead to Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain—Shakespeare and Company says the novella, a "small but perfectly-formed" literary object, "holds an important place in literature." The Paris bookstore known for its support of aspiring writers recently launched its first Paris Literary Prize to promote the form in contemporary practice.

One writer who has not published a novel, novella, or short story collection will receive an award of ten thousand euros, cosponsored by the recently established de Groot Foundation, and a weekend stay in Paris next June, during which the award will be presented. Two runners-up will also receive a weekend trip to the city of lights.

The deadline for the first three thousand words of a manuscript is December 1, and submissions must be accompanied by an entry fee of fifty euros (approximately sixty-five dollars). Finalists, announced next February, will be asked to submit their complete manuscripts (of twenty- to thirty-thousand words) by March 20, 2011.

Guidelines and more information about how to enter are available on the Paris Literary Prize Web site.

In the video below, the luminous Jean Seberg dances with melancholy in Otto Preminger's film adaptation of Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness), accompanied by the English version of the film's eponymous song.

The National Book Foundation (NBF), sponsors of the National Book Awards, announced yesterday their plans to celebrate Tom Wolfe at this year's awards ceremony. The innovative journalist and novelist who also holds a doctorate in American studies from Yale University will receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters alongside the 2010 National Book Award winners.

Wolfe, responsible for coining popular phrases such as "good ol' boy," "the right stuff," and "the Me Decade," is the author of culturally-keen nonfiction works including The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test  and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, and three novels, I Am Charlotte Simmons, A Man in Full, and The Bonfire of the Vanities. According to NBF executive director Harold Augenbraum, Wolfe's work, along with that of the NBF's 2010 Literarian Award recipient, Sesame Street cocreator Joan Ganz Cooney, "led to enormous changes in our view of the world and took established media in new directions."

The author, who joins a list of past recipients that includes Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, and John Updike, will receive the award on November 17.

In the short video below, Wolfe (sans white suit, circa 1970) talks about the expression of language in his native American South with media maven Marshall McLuhan.

Recently-born literary journal the New Guard has received such a swell surge of entries to its two contests that it's jonesing for more. The editors are "thrilled" with the "overwhelming response" they've received to their competitions, reports publisher and editor Shanna Miller McNair, and want to keep each of the staggered contests open for three weeks longer than their initial deadline dates.

The journal, which is looking for both traditional and experimental work, will accept entries for the Machigonne Fiction Contest until October 1 (the initial deadline had been September 13), and the Knightville Poetry Contest will run until November 1 (drawn out from October 4). Former U.S. poet laureate Donald Hall, whose most recent collection is White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946–2006 (Houghton Mifflin) will select the winner of the poetry competition. Debra Spark, author of three novels, most recently Good for the Jews (University of Michigan Press, 2006), will judge the fiction contest. Winners will receive one thousand dollars each, and their works will be published in the New Guard.

More information about the new lit mag and how to enter the contests is available on the New Guard's Web site.

In the video below, Hall and fellow poet Alicia Ostriker discuss why people sometimes reject poetry.

As the release date approaches for the Allen Ginsberg biopic Howl, the poet's publisher, City Lights Books, is calling all "angelheaded hipsters" to submit their own trailers for the "notorious epic poem" that lends the film its name. The winner of the video contest will receive a movie poster, a Howl T-shirt, a "Howl if You Heart City Lights" bumper sticker, and a copy of Howl on Trial, the story of the 1957 obscenity trial that called into question the book's literary value.

Select trailers, which must be under ninety seconds long, will be posted on the City Lights YouTube page, and the winning work will also appear on Facebook. Entries are due on September 24, the major city release date for the film. More information about how to enter via e-mail is available on the City Lights Facebook page.

The trailer for the film, which stars James Franco as Ginsberg, is below.

Now in their tenth year, the ReLit Awards honor independent poetry and fiction with a focus on celebrating ideas without the offer of a prize purse. The shortlists for this year's honors in poetry, short fiction, and the novel were announced earlier this week, highlighting titles published in 2009 by a variety of Canada-based small presses such as House of Anansi Press, Oberon Press, ECW Press, and Coach House Books.

The finalists in poetry are:
The Others Raisd in Me by Gregory Betts (Pedlar Press)
A Nice Place to Visit by Sky Gilbert (ECW Press)
Red Nest by Gillian Jerome (Nightwood Editions)
The Last House by Michael Kenyon (Brick Books)
Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip by Lisa Robertson (Coach House Books)
Paper Radio by Damian Rogers (ECW Press)
Always Die Before Your Mother by Patrick Woodcock (ECW Press)

The short fiction finalists are:
Sentimental Exorcisms by David Derry (Coach House Books) 
What Boys Like by Amy Jones (Biblioasis)
Men of Salt, Men of Earth by Matt Lennox (Oberon Press)
Fatted Calf Blues by Steven Mayoff (Turnstone Press)
Buying Cigarettes for the Dog by Stuart Ross (Freehand Books)
What We’re Made Of by Ryan Turner (Oberon Press)
The Moon of Letting Go by Richard Van Camp (Enfield & Wizenty)

The finalists in the novel are:
Overqualified by Joey Comeau (ECW Press)
After the Red Night by Christiane Frenette (Cormorant Books)
The Plight House by Jason Hrivnak (Pedlar Press)
The Beautiful Children by Michael Kenyon (Thistledown Press)
Wrong Bar by Nathaniel G. Moore (Tightrope Books)
Away From Everywhere by Chad Pelley (Breakwater Books)
Holding Still For As Long As Possible by Zoe Whittall (House of Anansi Press)

The winners will be announced on October 20 during the opening night of the Ottawa International Writers Festival in Ontario. Each will receive the ReLit ring, composed of four dials embossed with the alphabet.

The video below is a trailer for novel award finalist Zoe Whittall's shortlisted book.

For those interested in practicing their elevator speeches, the Algonkian Writer Conference will sponsor three events on the art of pitching your work. Pitch and Shop for fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers will be held from September 23 to September 26 at the Ripley-Grier Studios in New York City, Fisherman's Wharf Writers Conference for fiction writers will be held from October 13 to October 17 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, and Write and Pitch for fiction writers will be held from November 12 to November 14 at the Corte Madera Best Western Hotel, outside of San Francisco. Authors, editors, and, of course, agents will participate.