2016 Kirkus Prizewinners Announced!
The fiction prize went to C.E. Morgan for The Sport of Kings, as well as nonfiction winner Susan Faludi for her memoir In the Darkroom, and young readers’ literature author Jason Reynolds for his book, As Brave as You. Kirkus has awarded a $50,000 prize for each author. The three books were selected out of 1,100 that received starred reviews in the last ~twelve months.
Online Literature is Booming in China
With earning levels similar to Stephen King and George R.R. Martin, author Zhang Wei is China’s top-selling novelist. Most of the revenue comes from selling IP products and book publications, but Zhang Wei, also known by his pen name of Tang Jia San Shao, has gained an enormous amount of readers through publishing installments of his work online. According to this recent piece in the The New York Times, approximately 297 million people read Chinese web literature last year.
Purdue Librarian Launching Subscription Box Promoting Black Literature
Jamillah Gabriel is in the pre-launch of Call Number, “A library-inspired book subscription box celebrating contemporary Black literature and authors.” Highlighted in this article from the Lafayette Journal & Courier, Gabriel says, “The publishing industry is not diverse. There are not that many writers of color and the ones that they are published don’t get the press white authors do.” Check out a little more information here, as well as her video:
New Interactive Fiction Via Hyperlinks
The Seers Catalogue by Sean Michaels is an interactive experience about a strange magazine and a heist. This story driven through clicking on images and words was produced in conjunction with Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and converges post-modernist literature, gaming, and a choose-your-own-adventure type platform.
Artist Marta Minujín Reconstructing Parthenon of Books
Argentinian artist Marta Minujín will launch the project next year as part of documenta 14, and wants to use as many as 100,000 currently or once-banned books, saying “Democracy without books is not democracy.” The project is inspired by her 1983 display that marked the fall of Argentina’s dictatorship, and once complete will be installed in Kassel, Germany’s Friedrichsplatz Park, where members of the Nazi party burned approximately 2,000 books in 1933. Check out the details in this fascinating article in Smithsonian Magazine.
Trans Artist/Singer Promoting LGBT Books to Prisoners
Laura Jane Grace, frontwoman of the band, Against Me!, is raising money for LGBT Books to Prisoners, “a trans-affirming, racial justice-focused, prison abolitionist project sending books to incarcerated LGBTQ-identified people across the United States.” Donors to the project will be eligible to win one of five signed copies of her first book, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. You can qualify for the giveaway if you donate by November 18th. Published by Hatchette Book Group, it will be widely available on November 15,2016. In the meantime, check out this piece from MSNBC released back in June addressing the controversial North Carolina law HB2.
If you can’t get enough cool lit news, here’s more!
Emma Watson is hiding books in the London subway stations.
Is new Amazon app trying to replace children’s books?
Goosebumps author R.L. Stine writing Marvel comic book.
And…
Change Seven Editor-In-Chief Sheryl Monks launches her critically acclaimed book, Monsters in Appalachia. Congratulations, Sheryl!
Laurel Dowswell is the Features Editor at Change Seven. Her short story “I Am the Eggman” was nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize. She was a copy editor for an independent feminist newspaper in Santa Fe, NM, after being raised and educated in Florida. She lives and writes in Georgia, just outside of Atlanta with her son. She is currently working on a novel filled with oil paintings, family drama, and the spectrum of sexuality. Follow her on twitter @laurels_idea.
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