PEN for Kamau Brathwaite

The 2018 PEN America Literary Awards honored Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite, who recently received the PEN/Voelcker Award.

“The PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry is given in even-numbered years to a poet whose distinguished and growing body of work represents a notable and accomplished presence in American literature. The poet honored by the award is one whom expanded the scope of American poetry, and who continues to mature with each successive volume of poetry.”

His many books of poetry include Strange Fruit (2016), Elegguas (2010), Born to Slow Horses (2005), Ancestors (2001), Words Need Love Too (2000), Black + Blues (1995), Roots (1993), and Trenchtown Rock (1993), among others.

Brathwaite has received the Neustadt International Award for Literature, the Casa de Las Americas Prize for poetry and for literary criticism, among others.

For more news read our new BOOKISH PLAZA eZINE nr.70 MARCH 2018 edition.
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The New Essay by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith’s brilliance is on display in ‘Feel Free’

Upon opening “Feel Free,” Zadie Smith’s new essay collection, you’ll be surprised to learn that she doubts her literary talent, her critical acumen. I suppose that many literary writers are skeptical or anxious about their chosen profession. I know I am: though some invisible force compels us to create, we writers sometimes feel ourselves fraudulent intellectually, not knowing enough about anything to represent human experience or critique the arts successfully. Smith ought not be one of those writers though. Since 2000, Smith — London born and bred, now a New Yorker — has published six substantial, exceptional works of fiction (including the 2012 novel “NW,” a tour de force formally and stylistically) and an excellent work of nonfiction, “Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays” (2009).

Across her eighth book’s five parts — “In the World,” “In the Audience,” “In the Gallery,” “On the Bookshelf,” “Feel Free” — Smith has distributed a slew of essays, reviews (including a folio of “Harper’s” columns) and lectures written from 2009-17. Over the course of 435 pages, she covers Brexit and the waning British state; climate change; David Fincher, Facebook and internet 2.0; Billie Holiday; Joni Mitchell; Key & Peele; Schopenhauer, Charlie Kaufman and stop-motion animation; black beauty, black sorrow, oil painting and a horror movie about white liberals; the vagaries of lower-middle-class British life in the 1980s and ’90s; literary fiction and the discontinuous self; Justin Bieber, Jay-Z and joy.

Smith’s continuous stream of productivity, her topical range, the accolades laureling her books, her prodigious artistic abilities, should be evidence enough to assuage her fears about credibility. And yet, as Smith explains in the new collection’s foreword, her anxiety arises from believing she has “no real qualifications” to write as she does. “Not a philosopher or sociologist, not a real professor of literature or film, not a political scientist, professional music critic or trained journalist,” Smith thinks that her essays rest shakily on evidence that is “almost always intimate. I feel this — do you? I’m struck by this thought — are you?” She worries that her writing has “not a leg to stand on” because it’s born from “affective experience” and not argument. “All [the essays] have is their freedom. And the reader is likewise unusually free, because I have absolutely nothing over her, no authority.”

Read further @ LA Times

Get Students to Read

HOW TO GET STUDENTS TO READ MORE

For as long as there have been books people have worried that the death of reading was imminent. We hear it all the time: teens don’t read anymore! But during my eleven years of teaching, I have encountered students who read with more discipline than many of the adults in their lives. I often see students carrying the latest Lamar Giles or A.S. King novel, reading at lunch, and joining our school library’s book club. So why do English teachers and school officials worry about getting students to read more?

1.Encourage students to download the serial reader app and use it for twenty minutes a day

2.Provide students time during class to read

3.Leave off at a cliffhanger

4.Tell them how controversial it is

Read further @ BookRiot

 

Reading Challenges

50 DIY READING CHALLENGES TO MAKE 2018 THE BEST YEAR OF YOUR READING LIFE

The challenges here range from the serious to the ridiculous. The numbers are mostly arbitrary—for instance, I’ve used a lot of pick ten books. You could just as easily pick five or thirty. These ideas are jumping off points. My hope is that you find something here that excites you, and run with it.

1. Make a list of ten identities that are important to you and/or influence the way you experience the world. Now read ten books by ten different authors who share one of those identities, and/or ten different books that center and explore those identities.

2. Make a list of ten identities (race, religion, sexuality, gender, nationality, etc.) that are not yours. Now read ten books, each written by an author who holds one of those identities.

3. Pick ten countries you have always wanted to visit. Read one book that takes place in each of those countries.

4. Is there a genre you’ve always wanted to try but just haven’t gotten around to? Maybe your best friend has been telling you to try fantasy since forever but you’ve always shrugged her off. Pick the genre that’s always scared/baffled/bored you and challenge yourself to find one book in that genre that you absolutely love.

5. Read a book published each year between your birth and now. Goodreads by decade shelves can help.

6. Read a book about/that takes place in each of the fifty states.

7. Pick 10 classics you’ve always wanted to read. Now read a retelling/reinvention of each of those classics instead. Not sure where to start? Try these YA Jane Austen retellings, Alice in Wonderlandretellings, and retellings of myths and folklore.

8. Read 52 comics—one comic per week!

Read further @ BookRiot