March 5, 2015 Bulletin Writing from the Winners of the 2015 Whiting Awards By Dan Piepenbring Congratulations to the ten winners of this year’s Whiting Awards: Anthony Carelli, poetry Leopoldine Core, fiction Aracelis Girmay, poetry Lucas Hnath, drama Jenny Johnson, poetry Dan Josefson, fiction Elena Passarello, nonfiction Roger Reeves, poetry Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, fiction Anne Washburn, drama The Daily is delighted to have selections from work by all the 2015 honorees. Click each name above to read on and learn more about them. Read More
March 2, 2015 Bulletin A Room of One’s Own (With Someone to Make the Bed) By The Paris Review For the past two years, we’ve partnered with the Standard, East Village, in downtown Manhattan, to find a Writer-in-Residence—someone with a book under contract who could use three weeks in a hotel room. Last summer’s winner, the poet Ansel Elkins, from Greensboro, North Carolina, was profiled by The New Yorker during her stay. “I come down here with a book until I feel awake,” she said in the hotel restaurant, “and I watch the parade of fine-looking men in suits. You don’t get that in Greensboro.” Today through April 8, we’re accepting applications for our next residency. No dishes, no distractions, just a quiet room in the center of everything. The residency will last the first three weeks in July; once again, applicants must have a book under contract. Applications will be judged by the editors of The Paris Review and Standard Culture. You can find all the details here. (We’ll answer your most burning question in advance: yes, the room includes free breakfast and free coffee.)
March 2, 2015 Bulletin Now in Bloom: Our Spring Issue By The Paris Review The cherry blossoms on the cover of our new Spring issue augur the end of winter—even if they’re made of paper. They’re part of a portfolio by Thomas Demand, accompanied by poems from Ben Lerner. We also have the first-ever in-person interview with Elena Ferrante, on the art of fiction: As a girl—twelve, thirteen years old—I was absolutely certain that a good book had to have a man as its hero, and that depressed me … At fifteen I began to write stories about brave girls who were in serious trouble. But the idea remained—indeed, it grew stronger—that the greatest narrators were men and that one had to learn to narrate like them … Even when I wrote stories about girls, I wanted to give the heroine a wealth of experiences, a freedom, a determination that I tried to imitate from the great novels written by men. And Lydia Davis, on her approach to the short story, to translation, and to naming: I’ve always felt that naming was artificial. I’ve done it. I wrote about one woman and called her Mrs. Orlando, because the woman I based her on lived in Florida. Recently I wrote a story called “The Two Davises and the Rug” because I have a neighbor named Davis and he and I were trying to decide which one should end up with a certain rug, and I was very fond of using that name, even though it wouldn’t make much difference to anybody if I called it “The Two Harrises and the Rug.” Plus, Hilary Mantel discusses her Cromwell books and the difference between historians and novelists: Nobody seems to share my approach to historical fiction. I suppose if I have a maxim, it is that there isn’t any necessary conflict between good history and good drama. I know that history is not shapely, and I know the truth is often inconvenient and incoherent. It contains all sorts of superfluities. You could cut a much better shape if you were God, but as it is, I think the whole fascination and the skill is in working with those incoherencies. There’s new fiction by Angela Flournoy, Ken Kalfus, and Mark Leyner, the winner of this year’s Terry Southern Prize; a novella by James Lasdun; and poems from Charles Simic, Peter Gizzi, Major Jackson, Stephen Dunn, Susan Stewart, Shuzo Takiguchi, Craig Morgan Teicher, and Sarah Trudgeon. Mel Bochner, who designed a cover for the magazine back in 1973, is back with a portfolio of thesaurus paintings. And last, there’s “Letter from the Primal Horde,” an essay by J. D. Daniels about a fateful experience at a group-relations conference. Subscribe now!
February 24, 2015 Bulletin John Jeremiah Sullivan Wins Windham Campbell Prize By Dan Piepenbring © Harry Taylor Many congratulations to our Southern editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan, for winning one of this year’s Windham Campbell Prizes. The citation calls him “an essayist of astonishing range … empathetic and bracingly intelligent.” We heartily agree. If you haven’t heard of the Windham Campbell Prizes, that’s because this is only the third year they’ve been awarded— Donald Windham and Sandy M. Campbell founded the prize in 2013 “to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns.” Awards are given for fiction, nonfiction, and drama, to those who write in English anywhere in the world. “I couldn’t overstate how encouraging this award is,” Sullivan wrote, “or how practically helpful. In this phase of my writing life I feel a desperate need to stay down over the research I’m doing, not look up, and the prize makes that possible.” Also among this year’s nine winners is Geoff Dyer, whose work has previously appeared in The Paris Review. We applaud him, too, along with all of this year’s prizewinners. In September, they’ll gather at Yale for a festival celebrating their work.
February 10, 2015 Bulletin Visit Our Pop-up Shop Today By Dan Piepenbring You may have heard about our special Valentine’s Day gift box—choose any three issues from our archive, and at no extra charge, we’ll bundle them in the lovely package you see above, including a card featuring William Pène du Bois’s 1953 sketch of the Place de la Concorde. If you’re downtown this Thursday, February 12, and you need a last-minute gift, you can pick up a Valentine Day’s set from us in person. We’re hosting a pop-up shop at the Standard Hotel’s Shop at the High Line: 848 Washington Street at Thirteenth Street. We’ll be there from two to seven with a wide array of vintage issues, discounted subscriptions, T-shirts, and more. Stop by and say hello!
February 9, 2015 Bulletin The 2015 Folio Prize Shortlist By Dan Piepenbring This morning, the Folio Prize announced the eight novels on their 2015 shortlist. The prize, now in its second year, is the only major English-language book award open to writers around the world; it aims “to celebrate the best fiction of our time, regardless of form or genre.” Its chair of judges, William Fiennes, told the Guardian that the books on this year’s list “say something true about human experience in a way that feels like something new”: “There’s dazzle and wildness and experiment hand in hand with a deep core commitment to human struggles and fervors and longings.” Plenty of that dazzle and wildness is already familiar to our readers, who have encountered three of this year’s shortlisted novels in The Paris Review. Parts of Ben Lerner’s 10:04 appeared in our Summer 2013 and Spring 2014 issues; our Winter 2014 issue included an extract from Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation; and in that same issue, we began to serialize the entirety of Rachel Cusk’s Outline. We’re delighted that the three of them have been recognized for their work. The full shortlist is below—congratulations to all the nominees. The winner will be announced on March 23. 10:04 by Ben Lerner All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor Family Life by Akhil Sharma How to Be Both by Ali SmithNora Webster by Colm TóibínOutline by Rachel Cusk