BookFox

Roundup

Poets and Writers has a searchable archive of contests, including a function where you can find fee-free ones. (like Greensboro Review)

Book Reviewers, not to be outdone by the hundreds of fiction contests, now have their own contest. Virginia Quarterly Review wants the best review of a book published in 2008 by writers under thirty. Winners (and perhaps the five runners-up) are published in VQR. The name, "Young Reviewers Contest," makes it sound like the award is for tweens, but in the literary world, "young" is anyone under thirty-five.

Open Letters has a trifecta (1, 2, 3) of criticism on Evan Connell's collected fiction, "Lost in Uttar Pradesh."

After reading James Wood's "How Fiction Works," I'm starting to feel bad for John Updike, who is used as a primo example of how not to write in Wood's section on authorial/character narration. The text in question, of course, is "Terrorist." I still remember that Harper's article that dismembered that novel piece by piece . . .

It is disconcerting to find that various individuals named "John Fox" have already published a young gay lover novel, texts on "nonparametric regression", how poetry can heal, the historical "Trail of the Lonesome Pine", an expedition through Manchuria and, of course, the book of Martyrs. Guess I'll have to go with the John Matthew Fox approach.

Articles continue to pour in to eulogize Solzhenitsyn.

Jhumpa Lahiri takes Frank OConnor International Short Story Award

Jhumpa Lahiri took the Frank OConnor International Short Story Award outright, bypassing a shortlist. The longlisted authors surely must feel some disappointment that not even a shortlist was announced, because shortlisting can help boost the profile of a short story writer and increase sales. Apparently the judges were so certain they did not want to raise hopes, but hope raising is always part of the risk. I think they should have gone ahead and shortlisted simply because the process requires it and because of the benefits to authors that need the publicity. But then, again, highlighting little known authors hardly seems the focus when an author like Jhumpa Lahiri wins. A blurb from the judges:

“With a unanimous winner at this early stage we decided it would be a sham to compose a shortlist and put five other writers through unnecessary stress and suspense. Not only were the jury unanimous in their choice of Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth as the winner, they were unanimous in their belief that so outstanding was Lahiri’s achievement in this book that no other title was a serious contender.”

Million Writers Award: Top Online Stories

storySouth has announced its shortlist of online short stories for the Million Writers Award. It's a very egalitarian selection, with no journal represented twice, and you can read all the stories to vote for your favorite.

Frank O'Connor Short Story Award

The 2008 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the heftiest cash prize in the literary world for the short form (35,000 euros), has announced its longlist. Thirty-nine authors from around the globe are nominated. Only one Canadian was up (no, it wasn't Alice Munro) as opposed to fourteen British writers (!). But the nice thing about this award is that they actually make good on the their promise/goal of highlighting up-and-coming authors. On the American side of things, I'm glad to see Benjamin Percy nominated for "Refresh, Refresh," although both Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth" and Jim Shepard's "Like You'd Understand, Anyway" are obvious picks. (Tobias Wolff wasn't eligible because "Our Story Begins" collected previously published stories).

I'm also glad to see Nam Le nominated under the Australian category for "The Boat," which is his first book and which comes out this month. Roddy Doyle is up for Ireland, but his latest collection, "The Deportees and Other Stories," is underwhelming. Anne Enright, who won the Man Booker Prize for her novel "The Gathering," is also up under the Irish section, but since I haven't read her collection, "Taking Pictures," I can't pass judgment. If you remember, last year the prize went to Miranda July for "No One Belongs Here More Than You," and the shortlist was quirky, bypassing Alice Munro and favoring writers like the Israeli Edgar Keret. So it seems likely that an up-and-comer has a good chance with this prize.

Short Story Reviews and Awards

storySouth now has the longlist for the 2007 Millions Writers award, celebrating the best of online fiction. The list of publications is especially helpful if you're looking to read good fiction online or want to know which online publications (there are so many!) are good to send material to.

The May issue of The Short Review is out, with new reviews of oldies but goodies as well as some new collections.

The LA Times Hardcover Bestseller list has not one, no, but two (!!) short story collections in the top ten. I'm celebrating for the form. Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth" is still at number one (fourth week on the list) and Tobias Wolff's "Our Story Begins" clocks in at seven (also fourth week).

Pastry Chef = Short Story Writer

Junot Diaz, who just won the Pulitzer Prize for "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", commenting on life as a celebrity of the short story form:

"Being a hot young short-story writer is like being a hot young up-and-coming pastry chef." Who really knows or cares in the real world?"

(Interviewed in Newsweek)

Jim Shepard Wins Short Story Prize

Jim Shepard won the Short Story Prize last night for his collection "Like You'd Understand, Anyway." First prize was $20,000, and both runners-up took home $5,000. I just finished the book and understand (Yes, I do understand, really) why it won. It has a zest for exploration and a penchant for far-flung corners of the earth (Chernobyl, Hadrian's Wall, space), while balancing these journeys with the ballast of traumatizing relationships. Tessa Hadley, also nominated for the prize for "Sunstroke and Other Stories," wrote quiet stories, heavily psychological, many close to home. I haven't yet read Vincent Lam's collection "Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures," but just from Hadley versus Shepard, I've noticed that prizes in general usually tilt toward the political, heavy-drama, big-themed stories rather than toward more existential narratives, and I think this prize continues to fit into that trend. Which is not to say that Shepard shouldn't have won it - it's an incredible collection.

I've been considering lately what it takes to unite a collection. The way Shepard's collection was marketed was on the basis of its absolute diversity -- the blurb from Kirkus on the jacket reads: "So varied in tone, theme, voice, and setting are these stories that they might've been written by a hydra." When I first read that, before I read the book (which breaks all of my rules about never reading the jacket before reading --doesn't it always spoil the perception of the story?), I thought it exactly counter to most advice about constructing a short story collection. Everyone says to construct it very tightly, theme it as closely as possible, even use some of the same characters in multiple stories. Like two collections I just read: Laila Lalami's "Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits," a collection of stories all about immigration from Morocco, and James Joyce's "Dubliners," which announces its theme in its title.

But once I read the book, I realized that "Like You'd Understand, Anyway" was united just as strongly as many others. Even established writers can't get away with a slapdash arrangement. Shepard's stories are almost always historical and often heavily researched, since they're set in exotic locales or eras. They also involve disasters -- political revolution in France seen through the eyes of an executioner, a massive earthquake and tidal wave in Alaska. Also, there are several expeditions gone wrong, such as a search for the Yeti and a trip into the center of Australia. Although a few stories don't fit into the overall theme, such as "Trample the Dead, Hurdle the Weak," a story about high school football, and "Courtesy for Beginners," which is about summer camp, they evidence the same brio for life, only close to home, rather than in a foreign land.

One last note: While reading "Like You'd Understand, Anyway," I enjoyed two occasions where friends asked me what I was reading. I responded with the title, in a derisive tone. But before they could be really offended, I showed them the cover, laughing.

Short Roundup

I've always been fascinated with, yet never entered, the Writers Weekly 24 hour short story contest. Seems a bit gimmicky (in the same vein as NaNoWriMO), but also could be rather fun, in that collectivist, lets-all-make-art-simultaneously type of way. Anyway, it starts Jan. 26th.

If you want some great, constantly updated information about short story prizes and markets, check out the Novel and Short Story blog of the Writer's Market folks (I've also added a permanent link in the right sidebar under Short Story).

The Short Story Prize, which offers a $20,000 award, has announced its 2007 finalists:

Sunstroke and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard

Over at Biblioklept (great blog name, by the way), is the beginning of a list of absolutely essential short story collections, currently focusing on Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son.

Man Booker Winner

So as I predicted, Ian McEwan didn't win the Man Booker; instead, they choose an author with considerably less fame: Anne Enright won for The Gathering, one of the books considered to be an outside chance.

Check out the post-win BBC interview.

Man Booker

The Booker award is announced tomorrow, and all I can say is that it better not be On Chesil Beach. The book does not show Ian McEwan at his best, and the only thing that could catapult him into the winner's spot is an over-reliance upon his authorial publishing record and reputation, rather than an honest evaluation of the text. It's a slim story with occasionally moving moments, but nothing that deserves a prize. It's not even a novel, for heaven's sake - it's barely a novella. The problem with On Chesil Beach is not that it fails in what it attempts to do - which is to show the psychological issues of a couple that lead to sexual problems, used as a prism to illuminate that milieu - but rather that what it attempts to do is just so tame, so manageable, so unambitious.

Okay, that's my allotted rant for the day. But, you ask, who should win?

I'll take either Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones or Animal's People by Indra Sinha (which, by the way, is the favorite selection on the debate page of the Man Booker website). Also, check out Indra's Sinha's website to see his original cover art for the book (which is much better than the cover he was saddled with).

Nobel Awarded to Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing just won the Nobel Prize for literature. As the 11th woman to win the prize, she's also apparently the oldest, and contrary to what people predicted - that the academy would go outside Europe this time - she's British.

National Book Award Finalists

Does the prize season seem to come all at once, or is it me? Since the National Book Award finalists were just announced today, and the Nobel Prize for literature comes tomorrow, I feel swamped under prize mania. Despite that, I still am thrilled by the prospect. Sorry, can't help myself.

Nominees:

• Mischa Berlinski: Fieldwork
• Joshua Ferris: Then We Came to the End
• Lydia Davis: Varieties of Disturbance
• Denis Johnson: Tree of Smoke
• Jim Shepard: Like You'd Understand, Anyway

I'm glad that two of these - Davis and Shepard - are short story collections, and also glad Ferris was nominated (although I think it was more of a token - I don't think he'll probably win). I would think Tree of Smoke might be in the lead for potential winner, but we'll see about other predictions from the blogger gallery in the next week.

Nobel Stats

So below are some of the odds the bookies are placing on the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is awarded Thursday. For my money, I'd go for Les Murray, Margaret Atwood, or Milan Kundera. Apparently Europeans have won it the last nine of ten years, so the judges might want to go outside, and no Canadians have won it, which makes Atwood a frontrunner.

Claudio Magris 5/1
Les Murray 6/1
Philip Roth 7/1
Thomas Transtromer 7/1
Adonis 8/1
Amos Oz 10/1
Haruki Murakami 10/1
Hugo Claus 10/1
Joyce Carol Oates 10/1
Ko Un 10/1
Antoni Tabucchi 20/1
Cees Nooteboom 20/1
Margaret Atwood 20/1
Milan Kundera 20/1
Thomas Pynchon 20/1

Congrats!

Congratulations to Peter Orner for winning the VCU First Novelist Award for The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo.

Prizes, Prizes, Everywhere

The new Man Booker prize - the international version, since the normal version  bars all authors outside the British Commonwealth, has announced its shortlist. And with the caliber of writers on the list, judging the winner will not be a matter of parsing levels of talent - everyone on the list has plenty of that - but will rather be more ideological and political (Cynics will argue that's every award, which is only true to some extent). For example, the last prize, in 2005, which was also the inaugural prize, passed up authors such as John Updike, Margaret Atwood and Gunter Grass in order to publicize the lesser known Albanian author Ismail Kadaré.

Here's the list of fifteen authors who made it for 2007:

Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michel Tournier 

With the award pot hovering at $130,000, it'd be a nice windfall for anyone.

Also, in other award-ish news, Cormac McCarthy just won the Pulitzer prize for fiction for The Road. The book certainly deserves it - it's one of the most harrowing yet stylistically beautiful books I've read in near memory, and it's received near universal critical acclaim.

Tournament of Books

So I've been following the Tournament of Books with glee, and I just had to link to the judge's essay on Richard Ford's Lay of the Land VS Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August. It's hilarious. And I'm loving the comments from the peanut gallery at the bottom, although I still wanted Absurdistan to win over Half of a Yellow Sun. I guess there's always Zombie Round.

Best New Novelists

For the second time (first in 1996), Granta has named the Best of Young American Novelists (all of them under 35). Some choices are predictable (Jonathan Safran Foer and Gary Shteyngart), but there are a number I haven't read but now want to. There's been buzz in the blogosphere about Daniel Alarcon's Lost City Radio, so that tops my to-read list. Also, check out the biographies on the site - information rife with awards and creative writing teaching appointments. But please - who exactly created the cover art? Did they think they were appealing to pre-adolescents? Yeah, yeah, it's a spin-off of brand identities, Dr. Pepper, Dole, yadda, yadda. It's still rather jarring.

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominees

The Los Angeles Times announced the finalists for its annual Book Prize last night. Where? In New York, of course. Los Angeles always seems to be deferring to the great agent/publishing nucleus on the other side of the country (a very practical move, I know, but also a shame). Below are the nominees for Fiction and First Fiction.

Fiction

• David Mitchell, Black Swan Green: A Novel (Random House)
• Peter Orner, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown)
• Susan Straight, A Million Nightingales (Pantheon Books)
• Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone: A Novel (Little, Brown)
• A.B. Yehoshua, A Woman in Jerusalem [translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin] (Harcourt)

First Fiction

• Tony D'Souza, Whiteman (Harcourt)
• Lisa Fugard, Skinner's Drift: A Novel (Scribner)
• Jennifer Gilmore, Golden Country: A Novel (Scribner)
• Alice Greenway, White Ghost Girls (Black Cat / Grove/Atlantic)
• Janis Cooke Newman, Mary: A Novel (MacAdam/Cage Publishing)

The nominees for Fiction belong to a completely different strata than the nominees of last year. Last year showcased international power hitters like Haruki Murakami, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, E.L. Doctorow, Mary Gaitskill, and Nick Hornby. Certainly David Mitchell and Susan Straight have critical acclaim, but overall, I think the choices for this year tend toward lesser known (and lesser purchased) authors. I talked with one of the judges, Gina Nahai, who told me that the judging committee was aiming toward highlighting authors who needed the media and sales attention that a prize can bring.

Which goes to show the benefits (and drawbacks) of rotating the judges for prizes: On one hand, the awards can rotate between well-established artists who certainly deserve awards and lesser known artists who could use the boost in sales. On the other hand, the prize lacks a stable identity - people who use the prize to guide their book buying don't know what type of books are being chosen year by year, or the criteria for which the books are chosen, or develop a trust relationship with a group of judges whom they know select books that fit their taste. But if given a choice, I think that the benefits of rotating the judges outweigh the drawbacks. It enables a wider selection of fiction to gain attention in the market and helps people diversify their reading material, which is not only the explicit mission of many literary blogs, but a worthy goal for a prize to aim for.

PEN/Faulkner Award

Philip Roth has nabbed the PEN/Faulkner award for "Everyman". It's the third time he's won (previously for "Operation Shylock" and "The Human Stain"). But I found the shortlist intriguing - All four of the runners-up were short story collections:

• Charles D'Ambrosio ''The Dead Fish Museum''
• Deborah Eisenberg ''Twilight of the Superheroes''
• Amy Hempel ''The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel''
• Edward P. Jones ''All Aunt Hagar's Children"

Seems rather lopsided to have one novel stuck with four short story collections. But the three judges - David Gates, Debra Magpie Earling and John Dufresne - all of whom write both short stories and novels, argue in The Washington Post article that while the tilt toward shorts wasn't a conscious decision, they are glad because of the sales implications - perhaps this will push publishers toward paying the short form more respect.

Comments from the judges:

David Gates: "What hit me so hard about 'Everyman' was its intensity, and its systematic, pitiless stripping away of false comforts -- and then real comforts. The only comfort for the reader is that Roth has faced such terrifying truths absolutely straight, and made even this devastating material into a thing of beauty."

Debra Magpie Earling: "It's such a slim volume and the book haunts me, its simplicity and brutishness, the unflinching look at life. Roth never looks away, never trivializes, never shrugs. He manages to wrestle with grief, the immensity of losing self."

National Book Award 2006

So Richard Powers just won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Echo Maker. In a field without the literary power-sluggers of the year (like The Road by Cormac McCarthy and Everyman by Philip Roth), Powers was the early favorite (and Mark Danielewski's Only Revolutions was the oddball). Can't wait to read it.

Labels: Prizes

Man Booker Prize

Kiran Desai won the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. She's 35 - the youngest writer ever to win, but youngish-ness is what you have after eliminating David Mitchell and Peter Carey. The Indian-born writer's mother, Anita Desai, had been shortlisted three times but failed to win. Now we've seen examples of judges privileging certain books because an author's last shortlisted book failed to receive the prize, but not so often have we seen generational debt repayment - they didn't give it to her Mom, so she might as well receive it. But perhaps I'm being overly callous - I haven't even read the book. Ah well. For those of you curious of her style, here's a short excerpt:

Sai, sitting on the veranda, was reading an article about giant squid in an old National Geographic. Every now and then she looked up at Kanchenjunga, observed its wizard phosphorescence with a shiver. The judge sat at the far corner with his chessboard, playing against himself. Stuffed under his chair where she felt safe was Mutt the dog, snoring gently in her sleep. A single bald lightbulb dangled on a wire above. It was cold, but inside the house, it was still colder, the dark, the freeze, con­tained by stone walls several feet deep.

Labels: Prizes

Brits imitate NY Times

The New York Times poll-cum-popularity-contest that elected Toni Morrison's Beloved as the winner now has an copycat. The Brits couldn't resist the allure of staging their own survey, and canvassed famous authors for their "best of" between 1980 and 2005. Here's the Guardian article. Much as I think the contest misses the mark of nailing down a hierarchy of talent or "goodness", it still manages to reveal our cultural preferences and valuations, so here:

First place: Disgrace (1999) JM Coetzee

Second place: Money (1984) Martin Amis

Joint third place: Earthly Powers (1980) Anthony Burgess

Atonement (2001) Ian McEwan

The Blue Flower (1995) Penelope Fitzgerald

The Unconsoled (1995) Kazuo Ishiguro

Midnight's Children (1981) Salman Rushdie

Labels: Prizes

Man Booker Prize

The Longlist (19 books) is out for the Man Booker Prize, and boy do I want David Mitchell to win (he's given a 6 to 1 chance by betting companies!). Peter Carey's won it twice already, so honestly - that's enough. And besides, he's often overrated (sorry Carey fans). Even though Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is much better than his latest, Black Swan Green, he's a fantastic writer and should be honored as such.

For more info, check out The Millions or The Literary Saloon.

Labels: Prizes