Literary awards, Tomas Transtromer's death, and more
News, Reviews, and Interviews
This year marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Tomas Tranströmer receiving the Neustadt Prize, and we were saddened to hear he passed away last week. Read his poem “Oklahoma” and our tribute.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith selected Sjohnna McCray as the recipient of the 2015 Walt Whitman Award. This prize was established in 1975 by the Academy of American Poets and encourages the work of emerging poets by honoring first books.
The shortlist for the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature was announced: Vladimir Lucien’s Sounding Ground was the poetry winner, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings for fiction was the fiction winner, and Olive Senior’s Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal was the nonfiction winner. An overall winner will be selected from this list on May 2.
Vice released a short excerpt from Karl Ove Knausgaard’s latest work, My Struggle: Book Four. The book will be published on April 28th from Archipelago Books.
PRAESA (Project for the Study of Alternative Educations) has received the 2015 ALMA award. WLT broadcast the announcement live on our website and you can watch the videos to learn more about this organization in South Africa that promotes reading and literature for children.
The English PEN’s Writers in Translation program awarded sixteen grants to books displaying outstanding literary merit in international translation.
Fun Finds and Inspiration
To keep a pulse on Trafika Europe, a European literary radio project, please check out its Facebook event page here. We're excited to see how this free streaming radio system grows, and it could use your support in its early stages of development.
A new Kickstarter project hopes to build a library and public art space with 50,000 free books in Berkeley, California. It will coincide with the inaugural Bay Area Book Festival on June 6 and 7.
Books & Books was named the Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year. The award honors independent bookstores that have had a remarkable impact on the literary community. The bookstore is located in Coral Gables, Florida, and opened in 1982, now hosts over 60 events each month.
The Guardian highlights a new interactive map of Edinburgh that showcases literary locations made famous by Scottish writers. The project is called Lit Long: Edinburgh and features writers from Walter Scott to Irvine Welsh.
