Monday Miscellany

Tonight at 7, at the Donnell Library in midtown Manhattan, PEN will celebrate the winners of this year's Beyond Margins awards: novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (for Half of a Yellow Sun), poet Harryette Mullen (for Recyclopedia), critic Ernest Hardy (for Bloodbeats Vol. 1), and poet Alberto Álvaro Ríos (for Theater of Night).

Jaime Manrique and Sonia Sanchez will host an evening saluting the winners of the 2007 Beyond Margins Award. Joining in the celebration will be writers Adam Haslett, Marie Ponsot, and Monique Truong.

The evening will feature readings and conversation with this year's winners, as well as a reception following the event.

It is free and open to the public.

John Freeman has been blogging from the Frankfurt Book Fair, and he gives a mention to Eurozine, the multi-lingual online magazine with some great pieces on literature in several different languages. (Don't miss the "set language" button to the above right of those pieces.) Freeman mentions a piece on the "next great Estonian novel"; looking it over quickly, I didn't see any mention of the Truth and Justice pentalogy. Too old? (See also: Conversational Reading.)

Lastly, courtesy of Janaka Stucky of Black Ocean, those who have either worked on or submitted something to-- or possibly even read-- a literary magazine may enjoy The Futility Review, "dedicated to the non-publication of the best works of the best poets in the English-speaking world," where "any poet, no matter whether accomplished or beginning, will be rejected in the same open-handed manner." Be sure to check out the submission guidelines:

Does your submission contain any of these words: shard, limn, or numinous?

Regrettably, Yes

Do your poems mention grandma or your first dog?

What's wrong with that?

Is there any mention of butterflies or unicorns in your work?

Just in that one place

PS. Italo Calvino was born on this day in 1923. (He died on September 19, 1985.) Read tributes to Calvino by Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie, from PEN America 1: Classics.