Celebrating the National Book Awards 2017 Longlist!
It’s that time again! Last week, the National Book Awards released their longlist of 2017 honorees.
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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 the vast diversity of writers, the special few who make it into elite spaces are […]
...moreMirrors 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 watermelon joke, the positive direction of diversity in publishing, and her mission in writing: This […]
...moreDiversity 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 points out that regardless of changes in the business of publishing, what matters is the […]
...moreThe 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 the brief, dark moment when the National Book Awards tried to re-brand themselves.
...moreThis 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 that the collection, which takes multiple perspectives of people involved in and returning from the […]
...moreUrsula 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 and the greed of publishers, and predicts: I think hard times are coming when we […]
...moreGo 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 Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
...moreNBA 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 Off & Split (TriQuarterly, an imprint of Northwestern University Press) Young People’s Literature: Thanhha Lai, […]
...moreThe 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.
...moreNotable New York, This Week 11/16-11/22
This week in New York the Rumpus and Tin House present MORE THAN YOU EXPECTED with Rick Moody, Starlee Kine and Eugene Mirman followed by a meteor shower, Martin Amis and Chip Kidd celebrate Nabokov’s work with special exhibit of The Original of Laura, Pseudo-Futurist video game improvisation, a week of events centered on National […]
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