Thursday, November 15, 2007

How to Win a National Book Award

You've probably already read somewhere than Denis Johnson won the fiction NBA last night for his novel Tree of Smoke. Alright, so how did he do it? And more importantly how can we do it next year?

Go to the NYMag find out.

Actually, the implication of #1 is that we can't do it next year...


Then, up at Critical Mass, Jim Shepard has posted a quick reflection on what it feels like to be a National Book Award finalist. Tomorrow Denis Johnson will post what it feels like to win.


And finally, Ron Hogan has some NBA coverage up at Galleycat (scroll down for the info).

My favorite of the whole thing is this little story about nominee Joshua Ferris:

"Then Ferris told me that just before we'd started talking, someone else who had managed to obtain a press pass to the ceremony had tried to take the piss out of him by doing their 'interview' in the first person plural voice in which Then We Came to the End was written. ('Do we have any chances of winning the award tonight?' this guy asked. 'You don't,' Ferris retorted.)"

No comments:

Post a Comment