An international prize given to “an imprisoned or persecuted writer in jeopardy because of health or other reasons” has been awarded to Yang Tongyan, a Chinese writer in jail on anti-government charges. I did not find excerpts of what he wrote, but the panel behind the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award says he is a champion of free speech and democracy in China. Apparently Yang is serving a 12-year prison term for speaking his mind too freely.
Category Archives: Authors
Literature and Writing Conferences
Calvin College’s Festival of Faith & Writing is coming next week, April 17-19, in more or less beautiful Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s quite a drive from where I live, but even further is the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s Oxbridge conference at the end of July in Oxford and Cambridge, England. That would be an experience.
How Novels Work
John Mullan, senior lecturer in English at University College London and using material from his “Elements of Fiction” column in The Guardian, has a book on novel called How Novels Work, from Oxford UP.
How Novels Work explains how the pleasures of novel reading often come from the formal ingenuity of the novelist, making visible techniques and effects we are often only half-aware of as we read. It is an entertaining and stimulating volume that will captivate anyone who is interested in the contemporary or the classical novel.
New Imprint Will Reject Booksellers Returns
A new imprint from HarperCollins plans to publish 25 “short” books a year at competitive prices with “nonreturnable shipments to stores and lowered money to authors up front in exchange for increased profit sharing.”
Robert S. Miller will lead this initiative which has yet to be named. He said, “Our goal will be to effectively publish books that might not otherwise emerge in an increasingly ‘big book’ environment, an environment in which established authors are under enormous pressure to top their previous successes, while new authors are finding it harder and harder to be published at all.”
Miller hopes to convince booksellers they need to take on more risk for the books they order instead of leaving the risk entirely to publishers. The rate of return is “around 40 percent.” Sounds like Miller has an uphill battle to fight. (via Books, Inq)
More on this from writer Roger Simon.
Finalists in the Mid-West
The finalists in the 2007 awards from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association are in.
Leo Tolstoy on screen
Speaking of Leo Tolstoy, a biopic movie based on the novel, The Last Station, which deals with Tolstoy’s last year of life, begins shooting April 7 in Germany with a talented cast.
In praise of folly
In honor of April Fools’ Day, I offer the following excerpt from P. G. Wodehouse (who did fools better than anyone). It’s from the story “Jeeves Exerts the Old Cerebellum” in the collection, The Inimitable Jeeves, and was chosen purely at random out of the rich treasure trove that is Wodehouse:
I don’t know if you know that sort of feeling you get on these days round about the end of April and the beginning of May, when the sky’s a light blue, with cotton-wool clouds, and there’s a bit of a breeze blowing from the west? Kind of uplifted feeling. Romantic, if you know what I mean…. So that it was a bit of an anti-climax when I merely ran into young Bingo Little, looking perfectly foul in a crimson satin tie decorated with horseshoes.
‘Hallo, Bertie,’ said Bingo.
‘My God, man!’ I gargled. ‘The cravat! The gent’s neckwear! Why? For what reason?’
“Oh, the tie?’ He blushed. ‘I—er—I was given it.’
He seemed embarrassed, so I dropped the subject. We toddled along a bit, and sat down on a couple of chairs by the Serpentine.
‘Jeeves tells me you want to talk to me about something,’ I said.
‘Eh?’ said Bingo, with a start. ‘Oh yes, yes. Yes.’
I waited for him to unleash the topic of the day, but he didn’t seem to want to get going. Conversation languished. He stared straight ahead of him in a glassy sort of manner.
‘I say, Bertie,’ he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.
‘Hallo!’
‘Do you like the name Mabel?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t think there’s a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?’
‘No.’
He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.
‘Of course, you wouldn’t. You always were a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren’t you?’
‘Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all.’
Tags: P.G. Wodehouse, humor, Bertie Wooster, April Fools Day, literary, Jeeves
Nice Cover
I thought Susan Wise Bauer was working on an ancient history series, but somehow she squeezed in a modern history book called, The Art of the Public Grovel. Her publisher sent her an image of the cover. Eye-catching. Who is man? I know I’ve seen him somewhere recently.
R.C. Sproul Talks to Ben Stein
I watching this interview right now on R.C. Sproul’s website, Sproul discussing the issues of Ben Stein’s upcoming movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. They mention Galileo early on, which we’ve discussed on this blog. Later on, while discussing the idea that chance is not a force of creation or anything at all, Stein says, “Chance means something if you have no better explanation.”
Selling Your Book
Terry Whalin keeps talking about one of his books and answering Why Novelists Need Book Proposals That Sell. A great story isn’t all you need to sell your book.