“A noted publisher of literary translations and experimental fiction, Dalkey Archive Press, and the University of Rochester have decided to part ways following a recent announcement that the press, whose titles include work by Gertrude Stein, Aldous Huxley, and Carlos Fuentes, was moving to the upstate campus.”
Category: publishing
Getting Around The High Price Of Books (The Old Fashioned Way)
Having to cut back the budget? What about all those books you buy? “Few people know that the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ novels. You overspend on one, and, just when you begin to dig yourself out, the next installment comes along. Public libraries began during the Depression as a government measure against this very problem. They’re there for our protection, so we should use them.”
A Focus On African American Books
“Next week The Baltimore Times will join The New York Amsterdam News, The Philadelphia Tribune and several others in introducing Blacks & Books, a monthly insert focusing on books by or of interest to readers of African descent. The publishing industry is greeting the enterprise and its initial 100,000-copy print run with enthusiasm, and caution.”
Stoking Interest In Pynchon In The Digital Age
Thomas Pynchon is now 69, but “time, and the Internet, have advanced in his favour. It’s been nine years since his previous novel, ‘Mason & Dixon,’ came out, and fans have fully digitized their passion, building an online community worthy of an author who as much as anyone brought a high-tech sensibility to literary fiction.”
BookExpo To Try Its Luck In Vegas
America’s annual BookExpo is hading back to Las Vegas for te first time in 20 years. “The 2007 BookExpo America is scheduled for May 31 to June 3 in New York. The convention will move to Los Angeles in 2008 and back to New York in 2009 before heading to Las Vegas in 2010.”
IMPAC Long List Released
“Fourteen books by Canadians made the long list for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award yesterday, including works by Margaret Atwood, David Bergen, Camilla Gibb and David Gilmour. The prestigious prize is worth about $215,000. A shortlist of up to 10 novels will be revealed in April, with the winner announced in June.”
Lam Wins Giller
Vincent Lam, a Toronto East General doctor who wrote a collection of short stories called Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, wins Canada’s Giller Prize. “My parents came to this country when multiculturalism was just beginning to be acknowledged. As their son and as the second generation, I am proud to be here.”
Literary Idealism, Thriving In An Online Magazine
“Noted editor Tom Jenks solicited submissions from a few of his writer friends, then published six in the inaugural issue of Narrative Magazine…. There was no test marketing, no promotion, no advertising, no nothing other than a new Web site that had a two-page editors’ note and six pieces with some formidable bylines, including Joyce Carol Oates, Tobias Wolff, Jane Smiley and Rick Bass.” Three years later, Narrative is a success with readers. It’s also a nonprofit — and Jenks wants access to remain free. So now comes the fundraising.
Poking And Prodding Shakespeare
Ron Rosenbaum has “now done for Shakespeare studies what he did for Hitler studies: he has researched and interviewed the foremost living scholars, theater directors, actors, and critics, added summaries of the work of a few seminal critics of the last century, interjected asides concerning his own encounters with the poems and plays as well as with particularly memorable productions, and withal tried gamely to make the scholarly and critical issues being ‘warred’ over seem anything but parochial.”
Novels, The Hidden Budget-Buster
In a Shouts and Murmurs piece, Ian Frazier riffs on a New York Daily News item that suggested cutting costs by borrowing novels from the library instead of buying them in hardcover.