Literary News brings the latest reviews, news, reviews, latest trends, opinions, breakthroughs, disputes, and gossip in the literary world. If you have literary news or an opinion on literary matters that you’d like to bring to public attention, submit articles or press releases to editor [AT] phatitude [DOT] org.
Major Shake-up at Team phati'tude!
We’ve had a major shake-up at Team phati’tude!
Jennifer Crystal Johnson and Rebecca Kaye are moving up the ladder at phati’tude Literary Magazine. Johnson, formerly Associate Editor is now Managing Editor; and Kaye, formerly Editor is now Associate Editor.
- Jen Johnson
“Both Jen and Rebecca started out as interns for the magazine. Internships don’t usually come with position titles, but I think it’s important to provide interns with a sense of belonging. Having served initially as editors, Jen quickly became Associate Editor and began managing issues (Spring, Issue No. 3, Vol. 1.). As Rebecca utilized her keen editing skills, she also supervised our Summer Interns for the September 11th issue (Fall, Issue No. 3, Vol. 3),” says Gabrielle David, editor-in-chief of the magazine. “Their hard work, dedication and input has made such an impact on the quality of the magazine, it made perfectly good sense to encourage them to go to the next level.”
- Rebecca Kaye
And what’s the next level? Johnson is creating and managing phati’tude Literary Magazine’s upcoming Spring 2012 issue on women writers, while Kaye plans to explore myths in literature for the Summer 2012 issue. “I am crippled with mounting responsibilities,” continues David, “and as much as I love working on the magazine, the whole idea of it was to create something that other writers could help develop and call their own. I feel incredibly lucky that both Jen and Rebecca have come along, and as we get more interns and I’m able to pass on more administrative and production responsibilities into reliable hands, I feel confident that phati’tude Literary Magazine will continue to develop as a platform that promotes multicultural poets and writers from around the globe.”
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phati'tude Announces Spring Intern
The editors of phati’tude Literary Magazine is pleased to announce Kevin Tobar Pesántezan is our Spring 2012 intern. He will be working closely with the editorial staff, editing, doing book reviews, helping with interviews, and assisting on programming for the magazine.
Kevin is a Queens-born (NYC), Ecuadorian writer, spoken word poet, and facilitator. He is attending Long Island University/Global College majoring in Global Studies, and is currently conducting spoken word poetry workshops in Quito, Ecuador for the LGBTQ community as a basis to write his thesis. He is also the founder, editor, and contributor to the University’s literary magazine, Create!
Children's books increasingly emphasize visual art
JANE HENDERSON || ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH || JANUARY 2012
The glories of children’s literature will be highlighted Monday when the Caldecott, Newbery, Coretta Scott King and more than a dozen other book awards are announced.
It’s been almost 75 years since the first Caldecott Medal was handed out to encourage excellence in illustration of children’s books — and, in fact, it worked.
Publishing has changed since “Animals of the Bible” won the first Caldecott in 1938 and the Newbery went to “The Story of Mankind” in 1922.
Gentle, instructive tales are still around, and endearing animals abound. But not only have children’s books moved far beyond romanticized images of childhood, with chubby-cheeked tots and fluffy kittens, innovative works can make news or be transformed dramatically into another type of art, as “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” became this year’s acclaimed 3-D film “Hugo.”
With thousands of new children’s books published every year, the award-givers, the American Library Association, see everything from gritty realism to whimsical fantasies.
“It feels like we have a lot of everything,” says Kathleen T. Horning, director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She’s also the author of “From Cover to Cover,” a guide to evaluating children’s books.
“There’s a lot of inventiveness on the part of children’s book creators,” she said last week, talking by phone before her trip to Dallas for the library association’s annual meeting. >>READ MORE
In Pakistan, a national literature struggles to be born
STEPHANIE NOLEN || GLOBE AND MAIL || JANUARY 2012
Pakistani novelist Mohammed Hanif was walking his dog on the beach in the wealthy Karachi neighbourhood of Clifton one day not long ago when he found a crowd of people gathered around the decomposing corpse of a 60-foot beached whale.
“People suggested it was the nicest thing that had happened here in a while,” Hanif observed deadpan, eyelids at half-mast, in a recent chat in his garden. Slight and slim, with a mop of grey curls, Hanif mutters in both English and Urdu, and has a tendency to swallow half of each sentence, leaving a listener convinced she may have missed the crucial part.
A few days before he reluctantly welcomed a visitor, Hanif’s upscale neighbourhood of palm-lined streets was the site of a massive car bomb that killed 13 people, one in a series of bloody events that prompted Pakistan’s leading psychiatrist to observe that the whole city has a mild case of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Hanif doesn’t buy it. “You can only have post-traumatic stress disorder when you know it’s behind you,” he said. “Anyone in Karachi will tell you, regardless of their position in life, the worst is yet to come.”
The unsteady state of Pakistan is the backdrop for Hanif’s new book, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (to be released in Canada in May), and political turmoil was the overt focus of his much-heralded first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangos, a thriller about the assassination of the dictator Zia al-Haq. When that book was published, Hanif, who used to head the BBC’s Urdu service, would find himself at receptions in Islamabad where army generals would sidle up to him, slide an arm around his shoulders and say, “You’ve written a brilliant book. But tell me, what are your sources?” >>READ MORE
Finalists Named for Jewish Literary Award
THE NEW YORK TIMES || JANUARY 2012
The Jewish Book Council has announced the five finalists for the 2012 Sami Rhor Prize for Jewish Literature, which will be awarded next month to an emerging writer who seeks to add to the knowledge and understanding of Jewish history and culture.
The $100,000 prize, among the most generous in the literary world, has been awarded since 2007 for nonfiction and fiction works in alternate years. Last year, it was given to Austin Ratner for his novel “The Jump Artist.”
This year, the nominees are for nonfiction. The winner will be announced on Feb. 15, and honored at a ceremony in Israel in April. The finalists are:
Gal Beckerman, for “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Jonathan B. Krasner, for “The Benderly Boys and American Jewish Education” (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England)
James Loeffler, for “The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire” (Yale University Press)
Ruth Franklin, for “A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction” (Oxford University Press)
Abigail Green, for “Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero”
(Harvard University Press)
–END–
Independence for Scottish literature
ROBERT MCCRUM || GUARDIAN.CO.UK || JANUARY 2012
If Scotland gains full autonomy, its literature won’t be far behind and ‘British’ writing will look rather thinner as a result
Last night, as I listened to Alex Salmond give a cunning and subversive account of his plans for Scottish independence, in the Hugo Young lecture, it occurred to me that if the politics of the United Kingdom becomes fragmented, then culture will surely follow.
The phrase “British and Commonwealth” literature is sometimes casually tossed into discussions of the Costa and Booker prizes, but for how much longer? It’s easy to imagine a not-too-distant moment when there will be justly polemical assertions on behalf of Scottish literature. Actually, that’s already happened.
In 1994, James Kelman won the Booker prize for How Late It Was, How Late. At the award ceremony, there was an electrifying moment when Kelman delivered a brilliant and impromptu speech in defence of Scots literature, the Scots tongue and the Scottish cultural tradition.
On that occasion, many in the audience were slightly baffled by these remarks, which asserted something few really understood. However, if Scotland becomes independent, and equal with England, there may have to be a readjustment of the relative attention devoted to Scots and English fiction. And a renewal of literary critical language.
That would not be difficult to achieve. In Ireland, for example, Irish poetry and prose has extracted itself from the historical embrace of the English. “My passport’s green,” wrote Seamus Heaney, in a famous and definitive line.
Where all this leaves “British & Commonwealth” literature is anyone’s guess. There remains a thrilling and complex weave of English-language creativity, based in and around London, and includes writers from Africa, the Caribbean, India and east Asia. Together with writers from the Commonwealth, some (but by no means all) of these may be content to accept a “British” label.
But without infusions of new blood from Scotland and Ireland, British writing could start to look rather vulnerable.
African literature: keep on dreaming?
SASKIA HOUTTUIN || RADIO NETHERLANDS WORLDWIDE || JANUARY 2012
Storytelling has always been a part of African culture, but the translation to literature is only just beginning. What is the role of the contemporary African writer? At the start of the Dutch literature festival Writers Unlimited, Radio Netherlands Worldwide talked to three African writers from different corners of the continent.
A taste of African culture brings some warmth to the cold winter in The Hague, the Netherlands. The Writers Unlimited literature festival celebrates its 17th anniversary with a packed programme filled with lectures, discussions, music, movies and food.
The festival offers an annual platform for writers from all over the world, but this year the African influences are remarkable. Babah Tarawally, a writer from Sierra Leone and program coordinator of the event, has certainly made his mark.
African ambassador
“I tried to build up a festival that I would like, where I would go to,” Tarawally, who lives in the Netherlands, explains. “It was clear from the start that Africa should be on top. Over the past few years we’ve heard very negative and strange stories about the continent. As though it was a continent from space. I see myself as an ambassador. It is my obligation to make sure I represent Africa in a positive way”. >>READ MORE
Classics going to waste
MICHAEL HEYWARD || NATIONAL TIMES || JANUARY 2012
Out of print, out of mind? That’s hardly the way to treat Australian literature.
FOR a long time in this country it was argued that there was no such thing as Australian literature. As late as 1940, J.I.M. Stewart, professor of English at Adelaide University, declared that in the absence of appropriate books he would lecture on D.H.Lawrence’s novel, Kangaroo. In the year he said that, as if to mock him, Christina Stead published The Man Who Loved Children.
We like to think all that has changed. We live in the world of the home-grown literary bestseller, the world of The Slap and The Secret River. We love our new stars, and celebrate the success of Favel Parrett or Toni Jordan or Craig Silvey. Our writers have careers both at home and abroad. We no longer expect our life-changing books to be written in isolation and despair, against the odds, fulfilling what Henry Lawson came to believe was the destiny of the Australian writer. >>READ MORE
Chicago Tribune offers literature fans premium paid content
The Chicago Tribune has announced that it will be offering subscribers a new Sunday books section as a piece of premium paid content.
Printers Row, as the section will be called, will cost Tribune subscribers an additional $99 a year. Those who sign up will get a 24-page book supplement every Sunday, featuring reviews, interviews with authors and news from Chicago’s literary scene as well as a free book of short stories each week.
The Chicago Tribune describes the launch in its own business section as “a means to bolster revenue beyond the traditional subscription and advertising model” by offering readers with niche interests a high-quality targeted product that they will be willing to pay for. Gerould Kern, senior vice president and editor of the Chicago Tribune states that “audiences want very specialized information, and we are going to give them that”.
The Tribune compares its model to cable TV subscriptions, which encourage users to sign up to a basic package and then pay for extra premium channels. >>READ MORE
Jack Gantos wins 2012 Newbery Medal
CHICAGO TRIBUNE || JANUARY 2012
The American Library Assn. announced the 2012 winners of its annual Newbery, Caldecott, Printz and other awards Monday in Dallas. The awards are given to authors and illustrators of books, audio books and videos for children and young adults.
Jack Gantos won the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature with his novel “Dead End in Norvelt.” The ALA described the book as “an achingly funny romp through a dingy New Deal town.”
Author and illustrator Chris Raschka took the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children with “A Ball for Daisy.”
“Where Things Come Back,” from debut young adult author John Corey Whaley, won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults, as well as the William C. Morris Award for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens. The ALA described Whaley’s novel about a boy agonizing over his brother’s disappearance as “a groundbreaking coming-of-age tale.”
Kadir Nelson, author and illustrator of “Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans,” won the Coretta Scott King Book Award recognizing African American authors. Shane W. Evans, illustrator and author of “Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom,” won the Coretta Scott King Book Award for illustration. >>READ MORE
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