happenings
The National Book Award Finalists have been announced. Some surprises in the fiction category: no mention of The Lovely Bones or any of the other books that have made a big splash this year. But a debut collection of short stories by Adam Haslett, You Are Not a Stranger Here, made the cut.
Elsewhere, MobyLives mentions that Bill Buford, the fiction editor of The New Yorker, will be stepping down. No, that won’t do a thing to their slush pile, so don’t bother sending that masterpiece. And lastly, I just heard that Stephen Ambrose passed away two days ago, a mere five days after being mentioned on this site. I do hope it’s not a curse, for Doris Kearns Goodwin’s sake.
