This Week in Writing
Since the start of February, more than 300 Anne Frank-related books have been destroyed in libraries across Tokyo. In an announcement last Friday (2/28), the Israeli embassy's deputy chief of mission stated: “I think everyone understands that it's a single act that doesn't represent Japanese people.” The embassy will donate replacements for the books, including several copies of Anne Frank's diary. Read more here.
At the Oscars on Sunday night (3/2), John Ridley won his first Academy Award, Best Adapted Screenplay, for his film “12 Years as a Slave.” The story is an adaptation of Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir of the same name. Ridley is the second African-American writer to win this award.
Justin Kaplan, literary biographer and editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, died Sunday. Kaplan received a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards for his work. Listen to a 1992 interview with Kaplan and NPR's Terry Gross here.
Denis Johnson's new story “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden,” was published Monday (3/3) in the New Yorker. Read the story here, and an interview with Johnson and the New Yorker's fiction editor Deborah Treisman here.
On Thursday (3/6), George Saunders's collection Tenth of December won The Story Prize – a $20,000 award. In a statement, judges wrote: “This book is very funny and very sad.” Read the title story here, and find an interview with Saunders in Issue 27 of Hayden's Ferry Review.
T Magazine shared photos and interviews with writers about their at-home work spaces and writing stations. See more here, from Colson Whitehead, Joyce Carol Oates, and more.
~Sophie Opich