The National Book Foundation announced their 5 Under 35 list of young fiction writers “selected by a previous National Book Award Finalist or Winner as someone whose work is particularly promising and exciting and is among the best of a new generation of writers”: Matthew Eck, The Farther Shore (Milkweed Editions, 2007)Selected by Joshua Ferris Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men (Viking Press, 2008)Selected by Jonathan Franzen Sana Krasikov, One More Year: Stories (Spiegel & Grau, 2008)Selected by Francine Prose Nam Le, The Boat (Knopf, 2008)Selected by Mary Gaitskill Fiona Maazel, Last Last Chance (FSG, 2008)Selected by Jim […]
Authors
Prose's Novel, and More
The Washington Post has a quirky profile of Francine Prose following the recent release of her novel GOLDENGROVE, highlighting her thoughts on the writing process. “Francine Prose has thought a lot about writing in the 35 years she’s been trying to make a living at it. And one of the things she thinks is: It can’t be taught…. Never mind that Prose supplemented her income by teaching creative writing for two decades. And never mind that she achieved unlikely bestsellerdom a couple of years back with a text called Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books […]
Novelist Rhodes' "Comeback"
David Rhodes, 61, has been getting attention for his novel DRIFTLESS, published by Milkweed in 6,000-copy first printing–his first book since 1975’s Rock Island Line. The WSJ says “the re-emergence of Mr. Rhodes is noteworthy because he was once considered among the most promising writers of his generation. John Gardner, in his influential meditation about writing, On Becoming a Novelist, proclaimed that Mr. Rhodes possessed ‘one of the best eyes in recent fiction.'” They add: “Like many literary efforts, Mr. Rhodes’s novels barely caused a ripple in terms of sales. His books, which were issued in small numbers and only […]
Libel Suit Against Grisham Dismissed
A libel suit brought by a former Oklahoma district attorney against author John Grisham and Doubleday for the book THE INNOCENT MAN (as well as Barry Scheck, an attorney, and two other authors who wrote books about the same murder case in which two men were wrongfully convicted) was dismissed by Judge Ronald White. The AP says “the judge wrote that it was important to be able to analyze and criticize the judicial system ‘so that past mistakes do not become future ones. The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor.”AP
Posthumous DFW? Not Likely
David Foster Wallace’s agent Bonnie Nadell tells the Observer: “People are asking us, ‘Is there anything unpublished? Is there anything sitting in a drawer?’ But David was very fortunate, in that everything he wrote got published and published well.” But there are two short pieces of fiction (which ran in The New Yorker and Harper’s) that Wallace once said were from “something longer that isn’t even close to halfway finished yet.” But Nadell says, “Have I read the larger thing? No. And I don’t think anyone’s gonna read it.”Observer
The Patterson Business
There’s no question that one segment of the publishing industry–the James Patterson business–remains thriving. The UK’s Independent has him “on target to sell more than 20m books in the US alone” this year, with 10 original Patterson titles launching in the UK during 2008. Patterson tells the paper: “There is a kind of Mickey Mouse way of looking at brands. In particular in the States, a lot of the publishing houses are lost in the Middle Ages, they really don’t have a clue. I remember initially it was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to hurt the brand by doing […]