Dylan Thomas Prize Longlist, Peter Matthiessen’s Legacy, and More



Ayobami Adebayo, Carmen Maria Machado, Gabriel Tallent, and Emily Ruskovich are among the twelve writers longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. The annual £30,000 prize is given for a writer under the age of forty who has published a book in the previous year.

“…that’s the kind of writing that I’m interested in: How did we end up here? How did we become these people?” Hilton Als talks with the Guardian.

Peter Matthiessen’s nephew considers his uncle’s complicated legacy—Matthiessen, who wrote several books and won National Book Awards in both fiction and nonfiction, worked for the CIA for two years in Paris. As part of his cover-up, Matthiessen helped found the Paris Review. (New York Times)

Joe Pan and Kate Angus discuss running small presses, balancing writing and editing, and the decision for Pan’s press, Brooklyn Arts Press, to take on Angus’s press, Augury Books, as an imprint. (Rumpus)

Poet, filmmaker, and journalist Haim Gouri died earlier this week at age ninety-four. A “celebrated and often critical voice of Israel’s founding generation and its conscience,” Gouri wrote primarily about war and memory. (New York Times)

Scholastic will launch a new imprint in the fall, Scholastic Focus, which will publish narrative nonfiction for middle-grade and young adult readers. (Publishers Weekly)

Hanya Yanagihara talks about how she wishes she had written Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, how Phillip Roth’s books changed her, and how she hasn’t cried from a book (or anything else) since 1995. (Guardian)

David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, shares his writing routine and offers writing advice. (PBS NewsHour