Lit Lists Earlier this spring, the editors of WLT invited twenty-one writers to nominate a single book, published since the year 2000, that has had a major influence on their own work, along with a brief statement explaining their choice. We published the longlist and then invited readers to vote on their favorites. Here are the top vote recipients, followed by the respective nominating statements: 1. M. NourbeSe Philip, Zong! 2. Deborah Levy, Things I Don’t Want to Know: On Writing 3. John FitzGerald, The Mind 4. Roberto Bolaño, 2666 5. (tie) Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, and W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz To mark the occasion of Zong! winning the readers’ poll, M. NourbeSe Philip and Philip Metres recently took part in an email interview about the book. It will be published tomorrow on the WLT Weekly. M. NourbeSe Philip Zong! Wesleyan University Press, 2008 I discovered M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! only after I’d written abu ghraib arias, when critics saw parallels in the work. Zong! is at once a brilliant documentary long poem and a sort of ritual exorcism of the demons of the slave trade. Built out of the language of the legal document of Gregson v. Gilbert, Zong! brings to light the murder of Africans on board a slave ship in 1781 for financial gain. The kidnapped and enslaved Africans had been purposely thrown overboard so that the owner of the Zong could benefit from his insurance policy. Philip’s visionary use of the burying language... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-06-28 13:32:05 UTC ]
Audible is launching a fiction podcast featuring original short stories from writers including Daisy Johnson, Eimear McBride and Liv Little. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-07-10 17:17:09 UTC ]
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SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN’S COLLECTION of short stories Mouthful of Birds opens bleakly: When she reaches the road, Felicity understands her fate. He has not waited for her, and, as if the past were a tangible thing, she thinks she can still see the weak reddish glow of the car’s taillights fading on... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-07-10 17:00:00 UTC ]
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Interviews Shelly Bhoil Tenzin Dickie is a Tibetan writer and translator and editor of The Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalayan region. Her edited anthology, Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-06-25 14:25:59 UTC ]
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Matthew Stanley describes an international effort during World War I to support his most famous theory. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2019-06-20 18:39:41 UTC ]
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Picador has acquired a collection of short stories from "really exciting talent" Dima Alzayat. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-05-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A book written by a North Canterbury author is up for a special international business book award in London next week. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2019-03-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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As a recipient of the Arts Connects Us Grant I travelled to Ghana and Sierra Leone to meet with writers and publishing professionals working in the field of books for young readers to foster creative and collaborative exchanges between those contacts and publishing professionals and readers in... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-03-19 11:10:28 UTC ]
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You started writing early in your high school days, what were you writing about most back then?I think it is exaggerating to say I started writing at high school. I was already writing, but it was mainly journaling, which was not for public consumption. There was a poem (about a tree in the... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-03-15 11:15:36 UTC ]
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Imperial War Museums will launch a new classic fiction series this September to mark the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, the Imperial War Museums Wartime Classics series. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-03-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Podcasts, writing workshops and a collection of short stories are among the winners of this year’s RSL Literature Matters Awards. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Europa Editions has snapped up the latest collection of short stories by American writer Deborah Eisenberg. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-03-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Bloomsbury UK and US have both pre-empted on the first novel by award-winning short fiction writer L Annette Binder, inspired by her own family’s experience under the Third Reich. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Collection of short pieces, which has been in the works for more than a decade, takes stock of The Snowman author’s lifeRaymond Briggs is one of the UK’s most beloved children’s authors, the creator of characters from The Snowman to Fungus the Bogeyman. But in his forthcoming book Time for... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-02-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Picador has landed a second book of short stories by acclaimed science fiction writer Ted Chiang, Exhalation. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-02-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Some writers turn to fiction as a way to escape the nonstop onslaught of (mostly bad) news that Americans are subjected to constantly these days. Karen E. Bender, the novelist and short story writer, is not that kind of writer. Bender’s new short story collection, “The New Order,” takes on a host... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Indonesia is the country of focus at the London Book Fair this year and recently at Frankfurt - to what extent do you think Indonesian literature is finally having it's moment in the spotlight? I cannot say for certain what these one-off ‘spotlights’ on Indonesian literature would mean for... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-02-08 10:06:53 UTC ]
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Audible is bringing the novels and short stories of A.S. Byatt to audio for the first time this month. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-02-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Myriad has acquired world rights to Elaine Chiew's debut collection of short stories, The Heartsick Diaspora. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-02-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The shortlist for the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction was announced today at the El-Hakawati Palestinian National Theatre in East Jerusalem. The IPAF - often referred to as the ‘Arabic Booker’ - is an annual literary prize for prose fiction, which encourages the readership of... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2019-02-05 16:33:45 UTC ]
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University lecturer Claire Gradidge has won the Richard and Judy ‘Search for a Bestseller’ competition for her World War Two crime novel The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-02-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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