Tonight at 7pm, we’ll be at BookCourt to see a stellar group of authors—all faculty of Farleigh Dickinson’s MFA program—read their work: Jeffrey Renard Allen (Song of the Shank), Rene Steinke (Friendswood), David Grand (Mount Terminus), Thomas E. Kennedy (Beneath the Neon Egg), and H.L. Hix (As Much as, If Not More Than).
n+1 on paying writers: “For a young writer who hopes to produce literature, the greatest difference between now and twenty years ago may be that now she expects to get paid. Twenty years ago, art and commerce appeared to be opposing forces. The more you were paid for your work, the more likely you were to be a hack.”
The Academy of American Poets has expanded its Walt Whitman Award, which recognizes a first book by an American poet, to include publication by Graywolf Press and a trip to a residency in Umbria, Italy. The winner also receives a $5,000 cash prize. The judge of the 2015 contest will be Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith. Writers yet to publish a full-length book of poetry may submit a manuscript, for a thirty-five dollar entry fee, between September 1 and November 1.
The longlist for the 2014 National Translation award names Eugene Ostashevsky, Matvei Yankelevich, Heather Cleary, and Damion Searls, among others. Searls last wrote for Bookforum about W. G. Sebald.
The estate of Arthur Conan Doyle must pay legal fees of $30,679.93 in a case brought by the co-editor of a book of contemporary stories about the character Sherlock Holmes. Most of Conan Doyle’s stories are now in the public domain; only ten remain under copyright. But it’s those ten stories in particular, the estate insisted, that “create much of Sherlock Holmes’s emotion and human warmth.” The judge in the case, Richard Posner, was unimpressed, and called the estate’s practices “disreputable.”
Lauren Kern joins New York Magazine as executive editor. She was formerly editor at the New York Times Magazine.
