The Millions : Dashboard? More Like Bookshelf: Your Guide to Literary Tumblrs

“By creating this list of my favorite “literary Tumblrs,” I hope to turn you on to some of the sites that make The Millions’ dashboard that much brighter.”

PERPETUAL FOLLY: Perpetual Folly Pushcart Prize Rankings of Literary Magazines for 2012

“I have updated the Fiction list each year since then as soon as the new Pushcart anthology came out in December. For 2012 I added companion lists–one for Nonfiction and one for Poetry.”

Maggie Stiefvater Inks Deal for 4-Book Epic Fantasy – GalleyCat

“Author Maggie Stiefvater has landed a deal with Scholastic for a four-book epic fantasy series. The first book, The Raven Boys, is slated for release in September. The Raven Boys stars Richard Campbell Gansey, III (a boy who “has it all”) and Blue Sargent (daughter of the town psychic).”

iConnect Photography Book Release & Opening Reception | Piedmont Council for the Arts

“Please join us on Friday, February 3 from 5:00-7:00pm at the CitySpace Gallery for the book release party and exhibit opening of the iConnect Photography Program. Now in the its sixth year, the program is a collaboration between The Bridge PAI and Albemarle County Public Schools. Theis year, the program culminated in a book, El Rio, and a month-long exhibit featuring photographs by students from the Southwood and Westhaven communities.”

Erika Dreifus’ Guide to Flash Nonfiction Markets « BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

“Erika Dreifus, the blogger voice behind Practicing Writing, researched and assembled a list of flash nonfiction markets last week. She came up with 26 different markets, including a few which (like Brevity) offer payment to the writers published.”

The Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction « BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

Deadline: Submissions must be entered between December 1, 2011, and March 15, 2012. Maximum length for prose is 6,000 words.

JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth gets a complete genealogy | Books | guardian.co.uk

“But my devotion to Middle-earth pales before that of Emil Johansson, a photographer and chemical engineering student from Sweden, who has read “every book there is to read about Middle-earth” and who has spent years compiling a family tree of every character – every character! – in Tolkien’s world.” Via http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/01/in-the-news-cities-that-read-hobbit-family-trees.html

10 Bestselling Books with More Than 80 One-Star Reviews – GalleyCat

“We checked negative reviews of ten authors at Amazon–follow the links below to the many one-star reviews received by bestselling authors. Twilight topped the list with 669 one-star reviews.” HT: DW

A Daily Email for Aspiring Writers Is Truly Inspired – Culture – GOOD

‘According to Figment vice president Katie Robbins, the idea for the daily email was inspired by the Figment community’s demand for more ways to get inspired. Among Figment’s many services are social networking, feedback exchange opportunities, and writing contests, but users were “always eager for more,” Robbins says. “We wanted to do something that would encourage writers of all ages to get into the daily practice of writing and make good, carefully crafted writing prompts available to them on a daily basis.”‘

Enhanced E-Books: Blowing Up the Book – WSJ.com

“Enhanced e-books—which have multimedia features such as audio, video, pop-up graphics, 3-D images and animation—are being touted as the next frontier in the digital-books landscape.”

The Millions : 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists Announced

“Here are the finalists for fiction and non-fiction with excerpts and other links where available. As a side note, the NBCC award is particularly interesting in that it is one of the few major awards that pits American books against overseas (usually British) books.”

Writing is Hard « BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

Click for image.

Keep Giving Them You, Until You Is What They Want

“This quote comes from Dennis Palumbo, a former screenwriter-turned-psychotherapist, writing about rejection. He says it as a reminder that rejection is often arbitrary and impersonal, so if you take it as a reason to be somebody you’re not you’re making a mistake.”

The Business Case for Reading Novels – Anne Kreamer – Harvard Business Review

“I’ve been a devoted, even fanatical reader of fiction my whole life, but sometimes I feel like I’m wasting time if I spend an evening immersed in Lee Child’s newest thriller, or re-reading The Great Gatsby. Shouldn’t I be plowing through my in-box? Or getting the hang of some new productivity app? Or catching up on my back issues of The Economist? That slight feeling of self-indulgence that haunts me when I’m reading fake stories about fake people is what made me so grateful to stumble on a piece in Scientific American Mind by cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley extolling the practical benefits to be derived particularly from consuming fiction.”

The Book Bench: Has James Joyce Been Set Free? : The New Yorker

“The passage into public domain of Joyce’s major works has been talked up in certain quarters as though it were a bookish version of the destruction of the Death Star, with Stephen Joyce cast as a highbrow Darth Vader suddenly no longer in a position to breathe heavily down the necks of rebel Joyceans.”