paper trail

Jul 26, 2011 @ 2:04:00 pm

Chantal Akerman, courtesy of the San Francisco MoMA

Carrie Kania has left her post as publisher of Harper Perennial to become an agent at Conville & Walsh in London. According to GalleyCat, “her departure also sparked a reorganization,” but we hope the Harper Collins inprint won’t lose its current sensibility. Publishing books by the likes of Kevin Sampsell, Blake Butler, and Justin Taylor, Harper Perennial has become one of the most adventurous major publishers out there.

In addition to veteran fiction writers Alan Hollinghurst and Julian Barnes, four first-time novelists made this year’s Man Booker Prize longlist.

Should novelists moonlight as book critics? At Salon, Erin Keane considers the perils of leading a double literary life.

Filmmaker Chantal Akerman's adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s debut novel, Almayer's Folly, will premiere next month at the Venice Film Festival. The novel is set in Malaysia, and is about a treasure-seeking Dutchman, and his "failed marriage to his captain’s adopted daughter.”

A winner has been crowned in the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which invites writers to submit the worst first sentence of an imaginary novel. The winning sentence, courtesy of Wisconsinite Sue Fondrie: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”