books and authors Archives - Page 5 of 8

Signed, Sealed, Delivered – Emily Dickinson Envelope Poems

December 10, 2013

Fifty-two “envelope poems” written by Emily Dickinson in the early 1860s have been published in a coffee table size book titled Emily Dickinson: The Gorgeous Nothings. These “pocket-size” poems written on parts of envelopes have been in print since the 1950s, but “this is the first book devoted to full-color, actual-size facsimiles of a specific body of her work.” One of the poems begins” The way/Hope builds his/House” and is written on a “piece of house-shaped paper.” For more about these poems and the poet who “pushed the envelope”, check out this article in the New York Times. EPL is purchasing this book for its collection.

Laura

Radical-ly Chic Collection for NYPL

November 22, 2013

New York Public Library has acquired author Tom Wolfe’s archive, including materials for his novels, letters from friends Hunter S. Thompson, William F. Buckley and Gay Talese, works of journalism, and interviews with “historically significant figures like the test pilot Chuck Yeager.” Library president Anthony W. Marx called the archive “amazing”, saying: “His work touches on so much of the sociology of the city. Now this acquisition makes all of his material public.” The collection will probably be opened to researchers by next summer. Read the entire NYT article here and check the EPL catalog for works by Mr. Wolfe.

Laura

National Book Award Winners

November 21, 2013

This year’s National Book Award for fiction was awarded to James McBride for The Good Lord Bird. His novel, narrated by a child follower of John Brown, was praised by the judges for “a voice as comic and original as any we have heard since Mark Twain.” Considered an underdog up against such writers as Jhumpa Lahiri and Thomas Pynchon, Mr. McBride wrote the book “amid personal tragedies” and said: “It was always nice to have somebody whose world I could just fall into and follow him around.” The award for nonfiction went to George Packer for The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. The judges cited it for its “account of economic decline that traverses large cities and small towns.” The poetry award went to Mary Szybist for Incarnadine, and Cynthia Kadohata won the young people’s literature award for The Thing About Luck. You can read more about the 64th annual ceremony in this NPR article and in today’s NYT.

Laura

2013 Dylan Thomas Prize

November 8, 2013

29-year-old Claire Vaye Watkins has won this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize for her debut story collection Battleborn. “Aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide” the prize is restricted to writers under 30 and is worth 30,000 pounds (about $48,000).” Ms. Watkins also won two other major prizes on the same day: the $10,000 Rosenthal Family Foundation award and the $20,000 Story Prize. Her stories are set in the American West and were inspired by her childhood in Nevada. She told Fresh Air: “I always say I exist in a constant state of homesickness, and that’s really the context in which I wrote this book, too.” Read more about this prize-winning author’s very interesting background here.

Laura

Albert Camus – Still Controversial After 100 Years

November 7, 2013

French writer and philosopher Albert Camus, born 100 years ago today in Algeria is probably best known for his novels The Stranger and The Plague. But as France marks his centennial, “it’s his politics, not his his philosophy, that still makes waves.” Winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1957 and regarded as a giant of French literature, Smithsonian contributor Joshua Hammer, says it’s Camus’ “North African birthplace that permeated his thoughts and shaped his writing.” Like South Africa, French Algeria was a “very segregated society” and Camus “represents an Algeria of the pieds-noirs, the name given to the million-plus Europeans who lived there. He really didn’t know the Arab world.”Read the rest of this fascinating NPR article and check the EPL catalog for works by and about this author.

Laura

Neustadt International Prize for Literature

November 5, 2013

The 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature has been awarded to Mozambican author Antonio Emilio Leite Couto (Mia Couto). The first Mozambican author to be nominated for and to win this prize, Couto noted: “It is a sad moment for Mozambique because we are starting a war that we thought would never come back again. So to receive this good news is something like a compensation for me.” Born in 1955, his first novel Sleepwalking Land was published in 1992. Gabriella Ghermandi, who nominated him for the prize, said: “He is an author who addresses not just his country but the entire world, all human beings.” The $50,000 biennial prize is sponsored by the University of Oklahoma, the Neustadt family, and the university’s magazine World Literature Today. Often called the “American Nobel, it is the only international literary award for which poets, novelists and playwrights are equally eligible. Read more in today’s NPR article.

Laura

2013 Intellectual Freedom Award

November 4, 2013

Chicago’s Lane Tech student body and the school’s 451 Degrees Banned Book Club received the Illinois Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Award for their protest against the removal of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis. Chicago Public schools removed the novel from seventh grade classrooms because of its “powerful images of torture.” Lane Tech students waved signs along Western Avenue chanting “No more banned books” and “Let us read.” Because of their protests, the policy was reversed. Way to go, Lane Tech! Read more in this Chicago Sun-Times article.

Laura

Bits and Bytes of Storytelling

Interesting article in Sunday’s NYTimes Book Review section asked more than a dozen authors to talk about how new and changing technologies affect their storytelling. The writers commenting include Lee Child, Marisha Pessl, Frederick Forsyth, Douglas Coupland, Emily Giffin, and Ander Monson, among others. I love Margaret Atwood‘s response: “Do new technologies change what plot devices are available for writers of fiction? Do chickens have beaks? The answer is, of course. So it has always been. Your practice test: Rewrite Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Purloined Letter,” using present-day communications technology. Go to it. I’m sure there are a hundred brilliant solutions to the puzzle of “The Purloined E-Mail.”

Read what the other authors have to say and then check the EPL catalog for their works.

Laura

2013 National Book Award Finalists

October 17, 2013

The National Book Foundation announced the shortlist of finalists for this year’s National Book Awards. The award ceremony will be held on November 20. The finalists for fiction include: The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner; The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiria; The Good Lord Bird by James McBride; Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon; and Tenth of December by George Saunders. Nonfiction finalists are: Book of Ages by Jill Lepore; Hitler’s Furies by Wendy Lower; The Unwinding by George Packer; The Internal Enemy by Alan Taylor; and Going Clear by Lawrence Wright. In young people’s literature, finalists are The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt; The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata; Far Far AWay by Tom McNeal; Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff; and Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang. And in poetry, the finalists are Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart; Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido; The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka; Black Aperture by Matt Rasmussen; and Incarnadine by Mary Szybist. For more in-depth information on these books, see today’s NPR article.

Laura

2013 Booker Prize Awarded to Eleanor Catton

October 16, 2013

28-year old New Zealand author Eleanor Catton won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for her 848-page novel The Luminaries. She is the youngest winner of the prestigious literary prize, and the second New Zealander (Keri Hulme won in 1985 for The Bone People) and will receive 50,000 pounds or about $80,000. A murder mystery set in 19tKeri h century New Zealand, The Luminaries is “organized into 12 sections named for the signs of the Zodiac.” The Booker Prize, traditionally awarded annually to a novelist from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country, will be opened to Americans in 2014. Read more in today’s New York Times and in this NPR article.

Laura