The Windham-Campbell Prize winners, a new urgency of language exchange, and more
News, Reviews, and Interviews
The Windham-Campbell Prizes have announced the 2017 recipients, and recent WLT contributors Marina Carr and Carolyn Forché are among the winners. Australian aboriginal poet Ali Cobby Eckermann (who is currently unemployed and living in a caravan) is also among the winners, and she shares with NPR how the prize “is going to change my life completely.”
A UK Royal Society of Literature study shows that people place high value on a book’s ability to promote empathy, but British readers’ choices lack diversity.
Recent Neustadt juror Padma Viswanathan has a new work of short fiction titled “Better Protect America” that can be read in the online edition of Granta.
Recent WLT contributors Valeria Luiselli, Rachel Tzvia Back, and Antonella Anedda are UK Society of Authors translation prizewinners and were honored last week at the British Library.
Via the Times Literary Supplement, Adrian Tahourdin reflects on the UK Society of Authors’ annual translation prizes and how they highlight a new urgency of language exchange.
The New Yorker examines Neustadt laureate Elizabeth Bishop’s “art of losing” as examined in a new biography about her poetry and personal life.
Concluding a heated auction among multiple publishers, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have made a book deal with Penguin Random House.
In this episode of On Being with Krista Tippett, 2017 NSK Neustadt Prize laureate Marilyn Nelson discusses “communal pondering” and why Americans young and old are turning to poetry with urgency.
The Los Angeles Review of Books provides a history of feminist bookstores and looks at Kristen Hogan’s book The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability.
For International Mother Language Day, the Smithsonian reflects on four things that happen when a language dies.
Fun Finds and Inspiration
Books are adapted into movies. Why not essays? Literary Hub lists 10 essays that should be made into films, including works by Aleksandar Hemon, Joan Didion, and more.
The Telegraph lists 10 literary holidays to add to your travel bucket list—from celebrating Bloomsday in Dublin to Jane Austen’s 200th anniversary in Hampshire.
“The season is all about the appeal of the story.” The Millions provides a 40-day literary reader for the Lenten season that includes works by Flannery O’Connor, Dana Gioia, Brian Doyle, and more.
