Category: words

“It is time for writers to come up with books that address what matters to them most as they enter into their ‘Second Adulthood’.”

“The literary appeal of the pseudonym and of the reclusive genius tend to go hand in hand.”

“After a judging session described as ‘truly contentious,’ [a biography of Ted Hughes] was joined on the shortlist by five other titles, with subjects including autism, the digital age and Guantánamo Bay.”

“We asked the staff to turn down the music, and they just stared at us and said we needed to talk to the manager, who was not there. There were about five readers, and a cluster of people who wanted to hear them. TV screens were locked on some kind of game, the music was blasting. We were trapped. And then, hats off to the late David Poindexter, publisher of MacAdam, he grabbed a chair and hoisted it over his head, and we all followed him through the bar and out onto the sidewalk.”

Listening to the people who lived through some of the greatest political tragedies of the 20th century, she seeks to “chase the catastrophe into the framework of the everyday and try to tell a story”.

Roger McGough: ”People in other countries get very jealous that there is so much interest in poetry in this country. We should pat ourselves on the backs. In my day, poetry was seen as intellectual or dull.” He says in the past, “if people wrote poetry, they generally kept it to themselves. But these days, the profile of poetry is bigger.”

The Governor-General’s Literary Awards, which have been handed out since 1937, announced finalists in seven categories in both official languages on Wednesday. The winners, who each receive $25,000, will be revealed on Oct. 28.

“When will Philip Roth win?” has been the question since 1993, when Toni Morrison became the last American to win the prize. At this point, I doubt even Roth cares. (OK, he probably cares a little bit.) But his partisans care deeply, and they grumble loudly every year he’s overlooked.
Daily Beast

Since the poem has existed in fragments since the 18th century BC, there has always been the possibility that more would turn up. And yet the version we’re familiar with — the one discovered in 1853 in Nineveh — hasn’t changed very much over recent decades. The text remained fairly fixed — that is, until the fall of Baghdad in 2003 and the intense looting that followed yielded something new.

Svetlana Alexievich’s works often blend literature and journalism. She is best known for giving voice to women and men who lived through World War II, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that lasted from 1979 to 1989, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.