Winners, 2013 National Book Awards:
Winner/Poet Mary Sybist provides the night’s winning quote: “There’s plenty that poetry cannot do, but the miracle of course, is how much it can do, is how much it does do.â€
McBride, Packer win big at the 2013 National Book Awards | MobyLives.
The Committee to Protect Journalists just released their first ever report on press freedom in the US. For those who have followed the administration’s policies, court cases and actions related to leaks and the press, the report doesn’t contain a lot of new information.
What it does is weave together each of the cases and strategies the administration has pursued, surfacing key themes and illustrating that these examples are not aberrations, but part of a coordinated strategy.
Presenting this bigger picture reframes the debate over press freedom in America and reminds us that we need to demand a major course correction.
Committee to Protect Journalists Report Gauges the Press Freedom Crisis | Free Press.
…[T]he prize awarded this week that’s really worth paying attention to is the PEN Pinter Prize, given annually to both a British writer and an “international writer of courage.â€
This year’s recipients are Tom Stoppard and the Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip, who writes for Novaya Gazeta and has consistently covered election fraud, human rights abuses, and the activities of the Belarusian security services, the KGB (not that KGB, but the successor to the same).
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Khalip received the PEN Pinter award…on a significant date: October 7, the anniversary of the murder of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, author of Is Journalism Worth Dying For? and, like Khalip, a reporter for Novaya Gazeta. Khalip paid a low-key but moving tribute to her in her acceptance speech, saying: “I have to start my short speech with the name of Anna Politkovskaya… Seven years ago this day she was killed. She was a courageous journalist, a person who cared and my colleague.â€
The prize you should be paying attention to today | MobyLives.
Alice Munro, called by the Nobel committee “Master of the contemporary short story,†has won the 2013 Nobel Prize for literature. Munro, 82, is the first Canadian to take the prize. She told a National Post reporter earlier this year that she’s retiring from writing.
The Millions : Canadian Short Story Master Alice Munro Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The country is bracing for a temporary shutdown of the Library of Congress, beginning today [Oct 1]. The twenty-five library system will be closed to the public and researchers…