Archive for December, 2010

© Cormac Scully

Paul Murray is the author of the novels Skippy Dies (shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Award) and An Evening of Long Goodbyes.

Simultaneously the best and the worst gift I ever received was a Batman kite my father bought me when I was seven. We had gone to the local newsagent to buy the paper; I found the kite among the shelves of low-grade newsagent-type toys—bubble mix, plastic dinosaurs, translucent guns that sparked inside when you pulled the trigger. I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen: Batman in his opaque, implacable DC Comics incarnation (this was still a few years before the first Tim Burton movie) on an appropriately bat-shaped canvas.
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With the recent spate of articles debating MFA programs and the kind of writing they produce (including Elif Batuman’s “Get a Real Degree” in the London Review of Books and Chad Harbach’s “MFA vs. NYC” in Slate), we asked novelist Emily Barton to share her thoughts. The following originated as advice for her undergraduate students and has been reprinted with her permission.

Emily Barton is the author of Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron.

When Should I Apply to MFA Programs?

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We are thrilled to feature New Yorker “20 Under 40″ writer David Bezmozgis reading from his forthcoming novel The Free World (April, 2011). His previous book, Natasha, has become something of a favorite around the offices.

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Joseph Brodsky © Nancy Crampton

We’ve noticed a surge of interest in Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky centered around the recent New York Times article “Venice in Winter” and the use of poetry as travel guide.

The following two poems were recorded at the Donnell Library Center on December 18, 1980. The poet Mark Strand reads in English, and Joseph Brodsky reads from the Russian.

“A Part of Speech (as for the stars they are always on)”

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“A Season”

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Courtesy of the Academy of American Poets (www.poets.org) and Mark Strand.