So Long, Silas
April 22, 2010 Bestselling author Silas House will leave Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate to accept the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, beginning in August.
News & Notes
The Lost Saints
April 16, 2010 A.E. Willis, an eighth-generation Southerner, has sold a novel based on her family’s history in Tennessee. The book was bought by Grove/Atlantic, the publisher of Cold Mountain. Stories of her father’s growing up in rural Pocahontas, Tennessee, during the 1940s and 1950s inspired Willis’s novel, to be titled The Lost Saints of Tennessee.
At Last!
April 15, 2010 The Poetry Foundation has announced the 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the winner of the award, which carries a stipend of $100,000, is Eleanor Ross Taylor. The widow of acclaimed novelist Peter Taylor, Eleanor Ross Taylor made no apologies in her youth for downplaying her own artistic dreams to support her husband’s stratospheric literary career. Nevertheless, with his encouragement, she wrote steadily during the years of their marriage, publishing her first book at age 40 and following it with a book, on average, every decade.
Against Guides
April 14, 2010 Richard Bausch has never read a book of advice about writing fiction, and yet his novels and short-stories—not even to mention his writing awards—could fill a small library. In this month’s issue of The Atlantic, Bausch explains why he distrusts the vast, ever-growing, and frequently bestselling genre of how-to manuals for aspiring writers. Along the way, he makes a passionate and moving case for reading actual writers, the masters of their craft, instead:
Bright Lights, Long Battery Life
April 14, 2010 Early adopters take note, Jay McInerney half-blogs his initial response to Apple's iPad over at The Daily Beast. Along the way, he opines on Amazon vs. Apple, quantifies his travel reading requirements, and questions the holiness of print. "I don't consider the magazine, as a physical object, to be sacred. It's that it's always been so much more convenient than its online incarnation." Not so much, anymore, McInerney says, now that the Fall issue of Vanity Fair in print and on the iPad are more-or-less the same size and weight.
A Pulitzer for Stiles
April 13, 2010 Author T.J. Stiles has already received the National Book Award among other honors for his bestselling book, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Pulitzer Prize Board added to the acclaim by naming Stiles the winner in this year’s Biography category.
In announcing the honor, the Pulitzer committee called the book “a penetrating portrait of a complex, self-made titan who revolutionized transportation, amassed vast wealth and shaped the economic world in ways still felt today.”
