For the next three years, Baileys liquor will sponsor what used to be known as the Orange Prize. The British-based prize awards nearly $46,000 to the year’s best female fiction writer. This year’s prize will be announced on Monday, and though Hilary Mantel is rumored to be the favorite, she’s up against stiff competition: Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Kate Atkinson, and A.M. Holmes are also in the running.
Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda died nearly forty years ago. His body was exhumed about two months ago, and yesterday, a Chilean judge ordered police to find the man who may have poisoned him. The ruling is the culmination of a nearly two-year investigation into the poet’s death, and may confirm suspicions that Neruda was murdered by operatives working for then-dictator Augusto Pinochet. According to the Guardian, though Neruda’s cause of death was officially listed as prostate cancer, the story was cast into doubt when testimony surfaced suggesting that a CIA operative working with the Pinochet government may have been at the poet’s bedside when he died.
It’s a paradox: Why, at a moment when there is very little money to be found in writing and publishing, are MFA programs and writing tutorials booming like never before? At the Atlantic, Jon Reiner attributes the shift to the internet, and an unprecedented demand for content—even if there’s no money to support it.
The Justice Department will face off against Apple in court this week in the latest installment of the e-book price-fixing trial. And despite the best efforts of government lawyers, Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson won’t be required to testify against Apple.
The New Yorker runs an excerpt of Gary Shteyngart’s forthcoming memoir, Little Failure, and aptly titles it “From the Diaries of a Pussy-Cake.”
Courtesy of The Medium, here’s a little eye candy: an excerpt of Two Rivers, a photo book about Central Asia by Carolyn Drake, with text by Elif Batuman.
