News
I’m trying to get a few things finished (including Chapter 5) before I head out of town again, so there’s not much up here today. A few links to tide you over till later in the day:
- John Barlow at Slate: “My failed fling with a book packager,” or how he didn’t end up accused of plagiarism.
- I read excerpts of Mark Bowden’s Guests of the Ayatollah when they appeared in the Atlantic a few months ago, and they really irked me, for all the reasons that Evan Wright details in his Los Angeles Times review.
- I was very curious about Chris Abani’s take on the new Wole Soyinka memoir. Here it is, in last Sunday’s SF Chronicle. (Yes, it is another rave.)
- Film to character: How Capote explains Capote.
The shortlist for the 2006 Orange Prize has been announced: Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love, Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black, Ali Smith’s The Accidental, Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s Rules For Scientific Living, and Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch made the cut.
The new issue of Failbetter is up, with contributions by Benjamin Krier, Colleen Mondor, and Portland author Kevin Sampsell, among others. There is also an interview with Anne Tyler. Check it out.
The 2006 PEN World Voices Festival opened yesterday in New York, with dozens of readings and discussions on the bill. I’m looking forward to reading some of my friends‘ dispatches from the front lines. I did, however, want to highlight one event that might get lost in the shuffle:
Voices From Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby St.
Tickets: Free;
Call (212) 334-3324
Presented by The National Book Critics Circle
Writers read from Alexievich’s Voices From Chernobyl (winner of the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the explosion of Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant. The readers include Philip Gourevitch, fiction writers Ken Kalfus, Julie Otsuka, Lynne Tillman, Martha Cooley, and Jim Shepard, along with poet Lawrence Joseph and translator Keith Gessen.
Related: Slate has a photo essay by Paul Fusco on the 20-year anniversary of the explosion.
RAWI, the Arab American Writers’ association, has launched its website. Find out more about members, read the newsletter, and check out opportunities and annoucements.