Monthly Archives: October 2006

Symphony Space and The National Book Foundation Celebrate Mavis Gallant

Posted on October 30, 2006 by Aurel

Russell Banks, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Ondaatje, and Edward Hirsch will celebrate and read from the work of Canadian-born short-story master Mavis Gallant at Symphony Space in New York City on November 1, 2006. The program is part of the Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story series. Ms. Gallant, who lives in Paris, is acclaimed for her mastery in short story writing that has influenced American writers for nearly fifty years. She has published more than 100 short stories in the New Yorker, the third-most in the magazine’s “storied” history. Gallant will make a rare New York appearance at the event. The event is co-presented by PEN and the National Book Foundation. For more information and tickets, visit www.symphonyspace.org.

Posted in Author Tours, Authors, Events, Uncategorized, Websites |

Author reaches out to online book clubs

Posted on October 30, 2006 by Keren

If you’re an author, having your publisher insert a reading group guide into the back of your paperback is a nice way to reach out to book clubs. But for novelist John Shors, that wasn’t enough. When Shors’s novel Beneath a Marble Sky came out in paperback from New American Library in June, it carried a note from the author, offering to talk to any book club that contacted him via e-mail. Since then, Shors has met with (or teleconferenced with) a club almost every night, and hopes to talk with 1,000 clubs by next June.

Read the Publisher’s Weekly article here.

Posted in Articles, Authors |

B&N unveils online book club

Posted on October 30, 2006 by Keren

The world’s largest book chain is trying to create the world’s largest book club. Barnes & Noble has launched an interactive, online book club (at bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com), allowing readers to commingle—digitally, at least—with authors. Barnes & Noble Book Clubs, which launched this week with author Carl Hiaasen—his next book, Nature Girl, hits November 14—as one of its first featured authors available for questions and online chatter. B&N plans to host online talks with roughly 30 authors this fall and will also have discussions, hosted by bn.com online moderators, about classics and “noteworthy titles” in a variety of categories such as personal finance and health.

Marie Toulantis, CEO of bn.com, said the promotional opportunity for authors–which follows on the heels of the successful Barnes & Noble Recommends program, through which the giant retailer highlights one book a season to aggressively push in its stores–”meets the needs of authors who are eager to reach as broad an audience as possible.”

Read the Publisher’s Weekly article here.

Posted in Authors, Booksellers, Websites |

Author Matthew Skelton on his book "Endymion Spring"

Posted on October 28, 2006 by Keren

Matthew Skelton, author of bestselling children’s book Endymion Spring, discusses his life, career and experience writing the novel.

Having his first novel plucked from an agent’s slush pile and commissioned as a movie let Matthew Skelton make the leap from a failed academic who once couch surfed across Europe to an adored author on a book tour that puts him up in posh hotels.

Yet more than creature comforts, Skelton says the success of “Endymion Spring,” a history-fueled fantasy that has been described as a “The Da Vinci Code” for children, has allowed him to escape the Ivory Tower and accept himself as a dreamer who relates best to adolescents.

“They don’t just read books — they live inside them,” Skelton, 35, says of the young readers whose enthusiasm for fiction made “Endymion Spring” a best seller the week it was published in August.

Link to the Yahoo News story.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Children's books, Interviews, Reading |

Storytelling contest at HarperTeen

Posted on October 28, 2006 by Keren

From October 17th to December 15th, HarperTeen editors and authors invite you to join thousands of fans online to collectively create an original short story—one chapter at a time.

It’s easy to get involved. Just register by clicking on the link below, and then follow the weekly schedule to participate. You can submit chapters, vote for your favorites, or just browse and get writing tips from bestselling authors. You decide on your level of involvement. But everyone has the chance to win cool prizes—all you have to do is register!

HarperTeen is giving away incredible prizes over the course of this eight-week event. So sign up now and write, vote, and chat to win!

Prizes include:

* A $5,000 College or Higher Education Scholarship
* A trip to New York City to meet publishing executives and have lunch with a HarperTeen author
* A Princeton Review SAT Prep Course
* Thousands in shopping sprees from Alloy.com and Sephora.com
* Signed copies of books
* And more!

Link

Posted in Contests, Publishers, Websites |

Top business book award for 'gripping' book on China growth

Posted on October 28, 2006 by Keren

A “gripping” exploration of the economic and business implications of China’s breakneck growth, China Shakes the World, has won the 2006 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS – news) Business Book of the Year award.

James Kynge, the book’s author, collected the £30,000 top prize at a ceremony in New York on Thursday night. The judges praised the pace and style of the book, published by Houghton Mifflin.

The other finalists were: The Long Tail, Chris Anderson’s look at the economics of the internet; Bo Burlingham’s Small Giants about US companies that decide to be great instead of big; The Wal-Mart Effect by Charles Fishman, an analysis of the world’s biggest retailer; and The Box, an investigation by Marc Levinson of the container’s impact on world trade.

Link to the Yahoo News story

Posted in Authors, Awards, Non-fiction |

Debutant American takes top French literary prize

Posted on October 28, 2006 by Keren

The Academie Francaise, austere guardian of the French language, on Thursday awarded its top literary prize for the first time to an American author, whose debut novel, written in French, has become a best-seller.

“Les Bienveillantes” (The Benevolent) by Jonathan Littel, was the hot favorite and took the prestigious “Grand Prix du Roman” on the first round of voting by 12 votes to four for the other two short-listed novels, the academy said.

The 900-page tome tackles the Holocaust through the eyes of Nazi Maximilien Aue, following the activities of the SS death squads responsible for exterminating Jews and communists in areas conquered by German forces in World War Two.

Littel, 39, son of the U.S. writer Robert Littel, was awarded a prize of 7,500 euros ($9,494) for the work, which has already sold more than 200,000 copies.

Link to the Yahoo News story.

Posted in Authors, Awards |

Seattle writer Larson once more entwines dual narratives with his new book

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Aurel

Source: Seattlepi.com 

He would never do another book like “The Devil in the White City,” Erik Larson vowed. The money from the best-seller was wonderful — it even allowed the Seattle writer to indulge his taste for a classic 1967 Austin Healy — but writing a book with dual narratives was a nightmare. 

“I’ll never do that again,” Larson assured his wife. “It’s so darn hard.”

This week, bookstores across America are displaying Larson’s much-anticipated follow-up to “The Devil in the White City,” a No. 1 best-seller in both hardback and paperback. But the new book, with its massive first printing of 300,000 copies, has made a liar of its creator, who was so certain he “did not want to be derivative of myself.”

Larson’s “Thunderstruck” (Crown, 392 pages, $25.95) again entwines tales of two men — one a creative genius, the other a murderer. This time, “White City’s” architect for the Chicago World’s Fair and a serial killer who finds victims at the exposition have been replaced by the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of wireless technology (Guglielmo Marconi) and the most notorious British murderer since Jack the Ripper (Hawley Crippen), who dispatched his overbearing wife in ways most foul.

(more…)

Posted in Articles, Authors, Book Release, Reading |

Chinese author among winners of $40,000 US emerging writer prize

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Aurel

Chinese writer Yiyun Li is among the latest winners of the Whiting Writers’ Awards, a $40,000 US annual honour that recognizes emerging writing talent.

A U.S.-based fiction writer, Li won acclaim for her 2005 short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, netting the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She was also a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize, which honours books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia.

The other winners, announced at a ceremony in New York on Wednesday, are:

  • Navajo poet Sherwin Bitsui
  • Irish author Patrick O’Keeffe
  • Saudi Arabian novelist Micheline Aharonian Marcom
  • U.S. short story writer Charles D’Ambrosio
  • New York playwright and actor Stephen Adly Guirgis
  • South Korean poet Suji Kwock Kim
  • Mexican American fiction writer Nina Marie Martinez
  • U.S. playwright Bruce Norris
  • U.S. poet Tyehimba Jess

(more…)

Posted in Articles, Authors, Awards, Events |

Ontario Offers Province-Wide Writing Contest

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Aurel

In honour of the recent Ontario Public Library Week, the King Township Public Libraries are inviting people to put their thoughts of the magic of libraries into words, and enter a provincewide contest.

Library CEO Murray McCabe said the deadline for entries is Nov. 30. The contest is open to anyone 18 years of age or older, and stories must be 500 words or less.

For more information, visit the library’s Web site at www.king-library.on.ca or contact your local library branch.

Source: The King Township Sentinel

Posted in Contests, Events, Reading |