Perkins Award / Meek Gets Another / Writers’ Camps

Mawell Perkins Award Winner
Ther Mercantile Library announced that it will give its Maxwell Perkins Award to Gary Fisketjon of Knopf Publishing. Fisketjon has worked with Bret Easton Ellis, Raymond Carver, Patricia Highsmith, Jay McInerney, and Cormac McCarthy. Last year the library presented the award for the first time to Nan Talese. The award will be presented in early November along with the yet announced Clifton Fadiman Award for Excellence in Fiction and the Annual John Sargent Sr. Award.

Meek Gets Scottish Arts Council Award
James Meek, author of The People’s Act of Love, won his second prize for the novel from the Scottish Arts Council. The novel also won the Ondaatje Prize and was on the Booker long list.

Writers’ Camp
In a New York Times essay, entitled “What I Did at Summer Writers’ Camp,” Rachel Donadio explores the reactions of writers attending such famous colonies as MacDowell in Peterborough, NH, and Yaddo in Saratoga, NY.

Following Hollywood / First Book Prize Nominees

Following Hollywood’s Lead?
In the Poets & Writers essay, “Imperative: The Pressure to Be Exotic,” Azita Osanloo writes: In her report for the National Arts Journalism Program, Best and Worst of Times: The Changing Business of Trade Books, 1975–2002, Gayle Feldman, a veteran of the publishing industry since 1976 and a recent contributor to Publishers Weekly, wrote that “whether publishers like to admit it or not, an author’s telegenicity, promotability, and age enter increasingly into the acquisition equation, particularly for new authors whose careers need to be ‘made.’” Osanloo also wonders when the inflated bubble regarding the publication of memoir will pop.

Guardian Releases Longlist for its First Book Prize
The Guardian has released its 10 competitors for its First Book Prize: For fiction: Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living by Carrie Tiffany, Harbor by Lorraine Adams, and In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar; For biography: John Donne: The Reformed Soul by John Stuffs and A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveller by Jason Roberts; For memoir: Running for the Hills by Horatio Clare; For poetry: Waiting for the Night-Rowers by Roger Moulson; For stories: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li.

Quill Award Nominations

Quill Award Nominees Announced
It’s best described as the people’s choice awards for writing, not necessarily the best criteria for judging the value of a work but it is a measure. Starting yesterday and through September 30^th, people can vote for their favorites. Nominees are as follows: Debut author of the year: William Alexander for The $64 Tomato, Debra Dean for The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel, Raymond Khoury for The Last Templar, Julie Powel for Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, Mike Leonard for The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family; General Fiction: David Mitchell for Black Swan Green, Christopher Moore for A Dirty Job, E.L. Doctorow for The March, Irene Nemirovsky for Suite Francaise, Sara Gruen for Water for Elephants; Poetry: Maya Angelou for Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem, Garrison Keillor for Good Poems for Hard Times, Mary Oliver for New and Selected Poems: Volume Two, Pablo Neruda for Still Another Day, and Billy Collins for The Trouble with Poetry.
There are also categories for audio books, children’s books, young adult books, graphic novels, myster, romance, science fiction, religion, biography, business, cooking, health, history, humor, and sports.
Winners will be announced on October 11^th.

Fry-ing Poetry

Fry Helps with Poetry
Stephen Fry is an actor who has appeared in Gosford Park, Jeeves and Wooster, and V for Vendetta. He’s also a poet. He believes that “poetry is a primal impulse within us,” as he attempts to prove in The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within.

Copyright Issues / Didion Talks / Messud also Talks

Fair Use Copyright Doctrine Up for a Test
It has nothing to do with writing per se, but Kirby Dick will test the “fair use” doctrine of the copyright law with the release of his documentary This Film Is not Yet Rated. A century ago a copyright lasted 28 years. Today it’s the life of the author plus 70 years.
But who owns an idea. John Sutherland explores that question in a recent Guardian essay.

Didion Talks
Sean O’Hagan talks with Joan Didion while she is in London.

Writing Again and a Booker Nomination to Boot
After 9/11 Claire Messud thought she would never write another novel. Gaby Wood talks to her about The Emperor’s Children, which was long-listed for the Booker.

ChiTrib Lit Award / What about New Authors? / Poetry Workshop / Middle East & Writing / David Mitchell

Chicago Trib Announces Lit Award
Novelist Joyce Carol Oates won this year’s Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement. Winners of the paper’s Heartland Prize include At Canaan’s Edge by Taylor Branch and The Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich.

What about New Authors
In his report entitled “Another Turn of the Screw,” Barry Turner asks: Why, if more books are being published, are new authors being left out in the cold?

Kate Bingham’s Poetry Workshop
In yesterday’s Guardian, Kate Bingham, award-winning poet of Cohabitation, Quicksand, and Mummy’s Legs, started her workshop with this thought: “Repetition is something we usually try very hard to avoid, and the search for “another word for it” often leads poems into interesting new territory. It keeps us alert to lazy writing and the dangers of using only the everyday language we have at our fingertips.”

How Is the Middle East Affecting Regional Writers?
That’s the question that Richard Lea puts to writers such as Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury and Israeli writer Orly Castel-Bloom.

Profile of ‘Newer than New’ David Mitchell
The Guardian profiles Booker favorite David Mitchell, who has written Ghostwriten, Number9Dream, and Black Swan Green (this year’s Booker nomination), claiming that “the heady narrative trips of the 37-year-old’s first three novels owe a debt to the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.”

Can Creative Writing Be Taught? / Why Fiction Matters / Keillor Reads Skloot / Brooklyn–A Literary Mecca

Can Creative Writing Be Taught?
It’s an ancient question. In a recent posting by Atlantic Unbound (the online publication of Atlantic magazine), the writer recalls the advice of Wallace Stegner, Francine Prose, John Galbraith, and others.

Why Fiction Matters
In a New York Sun essay, “Matters of Imagination,” Eric Ormsby explores the practicality of literary fiction, despite the pressure of literary theorists efforts to rob it of such. Ormsby focuses on Edward Mendelson’s The Things that Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say about the Stages of Life.

Keillor Reads Skloot
Garrison Keillor is reading from Floyd Skloot’s newest collection of poems, The End of Dreams. He’s doing it on Writers Almanac, a public radio program. Today the reading is “Brahms” by Robert Bly.

Brooklyn—A Literary Mecca
For me, Brooklyn has and will always represent something special. I great up in the borough, and on September 16 Borough President Marty Markowitz will host Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Lethem, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rick Moody, Colson Whitehead, and many others. Between 5000 and 15,000 people will celegrate Brooklyn’s literary stars. It’s nothing new for Brooklyn, it being the home for writings for centuries, such as Walt Whitman and Thomas Wolfe of Look Homeward Angel.

Grenville Talks / Tony Who? / Life to Children’s Classics / Literature or Misogynies?

The Dead of the Literary Novel?
Kristin Tillotson of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wonders: “Nonfiction, once relegated to the “good for you, like oatmeal” shelf, has become the kind of fare readers choose for enjoyment. In this age of declining readership for all sorts of publications, any reading is good reading, right? Maybe. But does a de-emphasis of the literary novel — still the form of entertainment that requires the most engagement and conjecture on the reader’s part — coincide with a devaluation of the imagination?”

Booker Nominee Talks
John Freeman of the Book Critics Circle interviews Kate Grenville, whose The Secret River was nominated for the Man Booker Prize. Here’s her description of the book: “The book started with questions about my own settler ancestor and an uneasy realisation that his “settling” mightn’t have been as uncomplicated thing as the family stories suggested.”

Potter Vs. Blair—Tony Who?
According to a survey conducted by Zogby Inernational, more Americans know who Harry Porter is than Tony Blair.

Giving New Life to Children’s Classics
Michelle Pauli talks with Robert Ingpen about how illustrations give new life to children’s literature.

Literature or Misogyny?
Charlotte Higgins writes in the Guardian: “Irvine Welsh, creator of the heroin-consuming characters Begbie, Renton, Sick Boy and Spud in his debut novel Trainspotting, has been accused of misogyny in his latest work.”

Booker Long List / Huge Advances / Finding Muses

Ebooks Are Moving
“More than 30 million books were downloaded in the past month as part of the World eBook Fair,” writes David Mehegan in the Boston Globe.

Booker Nominees Announced
Here’s the list of the 19 novelists and their novels nominated for the Man Booker Prize, the British Commonwealth’s version of America’s National Book Award: Peter Carey, Theft: A Love Story, Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss, Robert Edric, Gathering the Water, Nadine Gordimer, Get a Life, Kate Grenville, The Secret River, M.J. Hyland, Carry Me Down, Howard Jacobson, Kalooki Nights, James Lasdun, Seven Lies, Mary Lawson, The Other Side of the Bridge, Jon McGregor, So Many Ways to Begin, Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men, Claire Mesud, The Emperor’s Children, David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, Naeem Murr, The Perfect Man, Andrew O’Hagan, Be Near Me, James Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mack, Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk, Barry Unsworth, The Ruby in her Navel, and Sarah Waters, The Night Watch.

John Ezard serves up an analysis of the nominees in an essay for the Guardian.And Neil Smith for the BBC wonders at the lack of comedic writers on the list.

Looking for Novelist Goodbar
Motoko Rich in the New York Times looks at why Henry Holt & Company gave Jeb Rubenfeld a half million dollar advance on the lawyer’s first novel.

Finding One’s Muse
Yesterday, the blog Critical Mass reviewed how writers have found their muses. It is based on Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses.

Howling with Praise / Beckett: Poet Laureate? / Jersey Shore Literary? / Stupid Is as Stupid Does / 25 Books at a Time

Howling with Praise
Celebrating his teacher’s and mentor’s most famous work, poet Jason Shinder put together a collection of essays about Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem “Howl.” The book is entitled The Poem that Changed America: ‘Howl’ 50 Years Later. It includes a CD with a recording of the poem’s first reading. Read more.

Samuel Beckett: Millennium Poet Laureate?
“Samuel Beckett would have turned 100 this year, but in a sense he was always 100. One is almost tempted to say he was always 1,000. …No writer better deserves the title of Millennium Poet Laureate.” That’s the claim of Robert Brustein in his essay “Samuel Beckett: Millennium Poet Laureate” in the Chronicle Review.

Jersey Shore Literary?
During this month, I’m going to the Jersey Shore to witness the christening of my niece. It will be warm. Hopefully sunny. And a breeze will come off the Atlantic. All features I have associated with the Jersey shore. Literary is not one of them. Yet Suzy Hansen makes the point in her Slate essay about Richard Ford and Frederick Reiken.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does
Four days before her due date (Sept. 25), Turkish novelist Elif Shafak will go on trial for “insulting Turkishness”–a real charge under the country’s criminal code. Novelists Orhan Pamuk and Perihan Magden were also charged in separate cases. The charges in the case of these men were dropped. Shafak’s offense? Her Armenian character says: “I am the grandchild of genocide survivors who lost all their relatives in the hands of Turkish butchers in 1915.” The genocide is not fiction. It happened.
Other related : Turkish court acquits author Perihan Magden, Interview: Elif Shafak, and Extract from The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak.

25 Books at a Time
Joe Queehan discusses his reading habits in his essay “Why I Can’t Stop Starting Books.” He wonders if he has “too long” an attention span.