April 14, 2014
For the second year in a row, Dav Pilkey’s series Captain Underpants topped the American Library Association’s list of most-challenged books. Pilkey commented that he was surprised “that a series with no sex, no nudity, no drugs, no profanity and no more violence than a Superman cartoon has caused such an uproar.” Other “vilified” books include, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. You can see the complete list in this NPR article.
Laura
April 9, 2014
Author and naturalist Peter Matthiessen died Saturday at his home in Sagaponack, New York at age 86. According to this fascinating NYT article, Mr. Matthiessen ” was a man of many parts: litterateur, journalist, environmentalist, explorer, Zen Buddhist, professional fisherman and, in the early 1950s, undercover agent for the Central Intelligence Agency in Paris.” He wrote more than 30 books, mostly nonfiction, and is the only writer to win the National Book Award in both fiction (Shadow Country) and nonfiction (The Snow Leopard). His final novel In Paradise has just been published. You can read the entire NYT article here. And check the EPL catalog for more works by this author.
Laura
April 4, 2014
The 2014 PEN/Faulkner prize for Fiction was awarded to NYKaren Joy Fowler for her novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. The $15,000 prize will be presented at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington on May 10. A panel of three judges, including Madison Smartt Bell, Manuel Munoz, and Achy Obejas, chose the work from more than 430 novels and short story collections. According to a statement by Mr. Munoz: “Fowler captures an altogether new dimension of the meaning – and heartbreak – of family dynamics.” You can read more in this short NYT article.
Laura
April 2, 2014
A new website dedicated to the work of playwright Lorraine Hansberry offers “all things Hansberry” including never-before released photographs, video clips of her television interviews, audio of her radio interviews and speeches. Although best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun, her estate created the site to focus on her work not only as a writer but also as a civil rights activist. You can read the entire NYT article here. And check the EPL catalog for more of Ms. Hansberry’s work.
Laura
April 1, 2014
Margaret Mitchell’s estate has authorized the publication of Ruth’s Journey – the story of the house slave Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Author Donald McCaig, who also wrote the 2007 Rhett Butler’s People, felt that “Mammy was such a fascinating and crucial character to the book he wanted to flesh out a story of her own.” According to the editorial director of Atria Books, author McCaig’s book “respects and honors its source material, but it also provides a necessary correction to one of the more troubling aspects of the book, which is how the black characters are portrayed.” Read the entire NYT article here.
Laura
March 19, 2014
NoViolet Bulawayo is the 2014 winner of the Hemingway Foundation’s PEN Award for her novel We Need New Names. The prize honoring best debut fiction was established in 1976 by Mary Hemingway in memory of her husband Ernest Hemingway. Along with the $10,000 award, the prize includes a one-week residence at the University of Idaho, and a fellowship at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Born in Zimbabwe in 1981, Ms. Bulawayo is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Read the NYT article here.
Laura
March 10, 2014
The first winner of the Folio prize, created in response to “shortcomings of the Man Booker prize”, was awarded today to the short story collection Tenth of December by George Saunders. Judges, including Lavinia Greenlaw, Michael Chabon, Sarah Hall, Nam Le and Pankaj Mishra, praised the stories as “darkly playful” saying: ” they take us to the edge of some of the most difficult questions of our time and force us to consider what lies behind and beyond them.” The other candidates on the shortlist were Red Doc by Anne Carson; Schroder by Amity Gaige; Benediction by Kent Haruf; The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner; A Girl is a Half-formed thing by Eimear McBride; and A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava. Mr. Saunders recently won the Story Prize, yet another major literary award for this author. Read the entire article here.
Laura
March 6, 2014
George Saunders won $20,000 for his collection of stories Tenth of December. According to the judges of the Story Prize: “George Saunders offers a vision and version of our world that takes into account the serious menace all around us without denying the absurd pleasures that punctuate life.” Runners-up Andrea Barrett for Archangel and Rebecca Lee for Bobcat each won $5,000. You can read the title story from Tenth of December in this NPR post. And check the EPL catalog for other works by this author.
Laura
February 24, 2014
For the first time in history, 26 hats from Dr. Seuss’s personal collection, along with his original artwork, will be touring the country, stopping in six states. His sister Marnie said that he collected unique and historic hats using them as a foundation for his book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, which marked its 75th anniversary last year. Making their way around the country “in a specially retrofitted old-fashioned steamer trunk,” the collection’s next stop is Northampton, Mass. See where else the collection will be touring in this NPR article.
Laura
February 19, 2014
A handwritten letter written in 1891 by Alice in Wonderland author Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) will be auctioned in England March 19 – and is expected to be sold for 4,000 pounds or more. In it he writes that he hated being famous and sometimes wished he “had never written any books at all.” In the letter written to his friend Mrs. Symonds he notes that there are plenty of people “who like being looked at as a notoriety. ..But we are not all made on the same pattern: & our likes & dislikes are very different.” You can read the entire article here. And check the EPL catalog for works by and about Lewis Carroll.
Laura
