National Book Awards
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Writing While Black
The publishing industry is 89% white. That isn’t the only problem when it comes to race and literature. BuzzFeed’s new Literary Editor Saeed Jones reflects on the issue in the publishing industry: When literary gatekeepers and publishers continue to overlook…
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Mirrors and Windows
Jacqueline Woodson responds to Daniel Handler’s racist watermelon joke at the National Book Awards with a moving and direct piece in the New York Times. She neither condemns nor forgives Handler, but instead focuses on her personal history with the…
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Diversity Matters
Daniel Handler’s (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) recent racist joke at the National Book Awards exposed an uncomfortable truth about the American publishing industry: its overwhelming whiteness. For the industry to survive, it must embrace diversity. Over at the Guardian, Carole DeSanti…
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The Disaster of the American Book Awards
In essence, the American Book Awards are to the National Book Awards as New Coke is to Coca-Cola Classic, i.e., a complete fucking disaster, one that all parties involved would prefer to forget. The Paris Review takes a look at…
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This Week in Short Fiction
On Wednesday evening, Phil Klay’s Redeployment won the National Book Award for fiction, making it the first short story collection to win the award since Andrea Barrett’s Ship Fever in 1996. That’s 18 years. But what’s maybe more startling is…
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Ursula K. Le Guin’s Prophetic Speech Wins the NBAs
In her speech at the National Book Awards on Wednesday, Ursula K. Le Guin shares her Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters with “all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long,” blasts the commercialization of literature…
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Go Domingo Martinez!
Last week was the National Book Foundation Awards Ceremony. At The Millions, Bill Morris narrates the event and cheers on underdog Domingo Martinez, author of the memoir The Boy Kings of Texas who lost in the non-fiction category to Kathrine…
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NBA Winners
The 2011 National Book Award winners have been announced. Here they are: Fiction: Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury USA) Nonfiction: Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (W. W. Norton & Company) Poetry : Nikky Finney, Head…
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The Rumpus Red Carpet Report: Live from 5 Under 35
On Monday, November 15, National Book Award week kicked off with the annual “5 Under 35” celebration, at which five young fiction writers were feted at the PowerHouse Arena in Brooklyn.