Author: Amber Nicole Brooks

International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award

The shortlist for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has been announced. The winner will be announced in June. This contest caught my attention for two reasons: 1) Dublin and 2) Jennifer Egan is one of three American finalists on the shortlist.

Librarians from around the world can nominate books, and the origin of the award is fascinating. From the FAQ on the website:

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was established by Dublin City, Civic Charter in 1994. It arose from an initiative of Dublin Corporation, the Municipal Government of Dublin City on the instigation of the then Lord Mayor, Alderman Gay Mitchell who commissioned an expert group to consider and report on the feasibility of organising a Dublin Literary Award. The expert group comprised of Chair, Mr. Sean Donlon (of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and GPA), Deirdre Ellis-King, Dublin City Librarian, Professor Augustine Martin of University College Dublin, Senator David Norris, Trinity College Dublin and Colm O’Briain, formerly Director of the Irish Arts Council. Their Report was adopted by the City Council and incorporated into the Report of the Lord Mayor’s Commission on Economic Development in Dublin.

Who wouldn’t like one hundred thousand euros? Here are the nominees:

  • Yishai Sarid (translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav): Limassol
  • Cristovão Tezza (translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin): The Eternal Son

 

Do YOU have any favorite book awards? Or, do you think awards are silly? I think awards are, at times, incestuous back patting and whatnot; however, most awards do nothing but breathe life into the literary world. Awards are good for books and writers. Some of my favorite awards are the Hugo, Nebula, Caldecott, and Newbery, because that’s how I roll; what about you?

—Amber

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List: Townsend Nominees

We’re getting close to the Townsend Prize for Fiction: April 26th. Nominees were announced in January:

The 2012 finalists are:

Are you a Georgia writer with a book coming out (or that has been released) in 2012? Leave a note in the comments and we’ll add you to our “List: 2012 Books from Georgia Writers.” Thanks for reading.

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Brilliant mini-poetry…

If you’re on the hunt for an objet d’art with brilliant mini-poetry…

 Laked, Fielded, Blanked by Brooklyn Copeland. alice blue press, 2010.

Click here for a review in which I plug it, Bookbillies.

-Gregg Murray

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How to Write a Story: Vonnegut Speaks

A big thank you to the wonderful reader who sent me these links, a reader whom I’m not naming because I do know know if he or she wishes to be named.

Kurt Vonnegut narrates his 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story:

 

The post over at Brain Pickings also includes links to Henry James’ 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, among others.

Or, we can also learn by examining the history of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, over at Letters of Note.

Do you have any notable advice or story histories you’ve found? Let us know in the comments and if you have links we’ll add them to the post.

–Amber

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Why Narrative?

I’m spending a week on Kelly Link stories this semester, and looking at contemporary literature always poses a challenge. I’ve taught my students to read stories from an academic angle, to conduct secondary research, and to produce their own scholarship on a topic. But when they read a story that is so shiny, funny, and weird, as, say, “Some Zombie Contingency Plans,” most of them will simply enjoy the ride, experience the story. Of course, this is wonderful, but I also need them to think critically about the text. I’ve urged them, in their readings of Link’s stories, to consider the nature of narrative and the nature of the storyteller–how we create stories as a society and also individually just to get through the day, also how narratives may be in competition with one another. Connected here, as well, is the larger question of why we need narrative, what inside a narrative creates resonance that draws us in, comforts us. It’s obvious to my students why the Igbo in Achebe’s work “need” narratives in their society or why Langston Hughes’s work is important to our nation.

“But what about a story written now that fits you now? What about the now?” I ask. They don’t know; they don’t know about the now…and I hope there is more introspection going on in that sea of faces than they let on.

In “Do We Need Stories?”, in The New York Review of Books, Tim Parks addresses the impetus to creative a narrative of self, the position of the novel, and the notion of need.

Maura Kelly, in The Atlantic, makes an argument for a Slow Books Movement.

–Amber

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April Date-Night Destination: Townsend Prize

From Lydia Ship:

If you’re a lover of Southern wordsmiths and flora alike then don’t miss out on a treat of a lifetime on the evening of Thursday, April 26th when Georgia Perimeter College’s Southern Academy for Literary Arts and Scholarly Research and The Chattahoochee Review host the reception and award ceremony for the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction at the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Day Hall.

Created in memory of Jim Townsend, founding editor of Atlanta magazine and mentor to some of the state’s most lauded men and women of letters, the prize is presented biennially to a Georgia writer who is judged to have published the most outstanding book of fiction during the preceding two years.

Registration to the reception and award ceremony is available online in advance only via the following link: https://giving.gpc.edu/townsend.

 The deadline for all online registration is April 11, 2012 at 5 p.m.

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Reading Now

I recently read a little uncanny gem of a book titled Fables. A review is forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Vol. 30, No. 1.

So, when I then saw the most beautiful book of the same title at my local library, I had to pick it up. The two books are unrelated, yet I can’t ignore the serendipity of the discovery. It turned out I had found Fables: The Deluxe Edition Book One, by Bill Willingham. This hardback book contains issues 1-10. I can’t say enough about it–it’s a lovely adventure.

—Amber

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A What?

What in the hell is a bookbilly?

Books are words bound up. Books are stories. Books are hobby, escape, history, art. Books are life. In addition to books, there are hillbillies. Courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary, one may find an excerpt from the New York Medical Journal of April 23rd, 1900: “In short, a Hill-Billie is a free and untrammelled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him.” Here, being of the hills does not denote only location, but an ethos, a way, a habit, a heritage. “Untrammelled” indicates unhindered, unrestrained, unrepressed, free. Just as a hillbilly is a person of the hills, a bookbilly is a person of books. And bookbillies should envision themselves as untrammelled as the iconic whisky-sipping soul from the hills; there’s no right way to live this life of books and letters, but one thing is for sure: the bookbilly cannot live otherwise.

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Hiatus

On Official Hiatus.

May return with important announcements…or when I figure out how to balance teaching a full load of classes with writing. Ha–that’s a good one.

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