This inaugural volume of The &Now Awards recognizes the most provocative, hardest-hitting, deadly serious, patently absurd, cutting-edge, avant-everything-and-nothing work from the years 2004-09. The &NOW Awards features writing as a contemporary art form: writing as it is practiced today by authors who consciously treat their work as an art, and as a practice explicitly aware of its own literary and extra-literary history--as much about its form and materials, language, as it about its subject matter.
The &NOW conference--moving from the University of Notre Dame (2004), Lake Forest College (2006), Chapman University (2008), and the University at Buffalo (2009)--sets the stage for this aesthetic, while The &Now Awards features work from the wider world of innovative publishing and serves as an ideal survey of the contemporary scene.
This second volume of The &Now Awards recognizes the most provocative, hardest-hitting, deadly serious, patently absurd, cutting-edge, avant-everything-and-nothing work from the years 2009-11. The &NOW Awards features writing as a contemporary art form: writing as it is practiced today by authors who consciously treat their work as an art, and as a practice explicitly aware of its own literary and extra-literary history-- as much about its form and materials, language, as it about its subject matter. The &NOW conference, moving from the University of Notre Dame (2004), Lake Forest College (2006), Chapman University (2008), the University at Buffalo (2009), the University of California, San Diego (2011), and Paris (Sorbonne and Diderot, 2012)--sets the stage for this aesthetic, while The &Now Awards features work from the wider world of innovative publishing and serves as an ideal survey of the contemporary scene.
Contributors include: Harold Abramowitz (.UNFO), Shane Allison, Dimitri Anastasopoulos, Rachel Gontijo Araujo, Garrett Ashley, Joe Atkins, Jesse Ball, Lutz Bassmann, Jose Perez Beduya, Matt Bell, Kate Bernheimer, Arno Bertina, Andrew Borgstrom, Daniel Borzutzky, Amina Memory Cain, J. R. Carpenter, Julie Carr, Sam Cha, Alexandra Chasin, Don Mee Choi, Jack Collom, Josh Corey, Shome Dasgupta, Katie Degentesh, Andy Devine, LaTasha Nevada Diggs, Ben Doller, Sandra Doller, Manuela Draeger, Marcella Durand, Kate Durbin, Craig Dworkin, Brian Evenson, Elisa Gabbert, Roxane Gay, Elizabeth Gentry, Johannes Göransson, Amelia Gray, Amira Hanafi, Duriel E. Harris (Black Took Collective), Gretchen E. Henderson, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Laird Hunt, Kim Hyesoon, Parneshia Jones, Bhanu Kapil, Jennifer Karmin, Janice Lee, Daniel Levin Becker, Michael Leong, A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz, John Madera, Annam Manthiram, Jennifer Martenson, Dawn Lundy Martin (Black Took Collective), Joyelle McSweeney, Christina Milletti, Monica Mody, K. Silem Mohammad, Nick Montfort, Sawako Nakaysu, Urayoán Noel, Alissa Nutting, Lance Phillips, Evelyn Reilly, Dan Richert (.UNFO), Kathleen Rooney, Marc Saaporta, David Shields, Eleni Sikelianos, Amber Sparks, Anna Joy Springer, Ken Taylor, Anne-Laure Tissut, Sarah Tourjee, J. A. Tyler, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Nico Vassilakis, Antione Volodine, Ronaldo V. Wilson (Black Took Collective), Raúl Zurita
The stories are arranged alphabetically by author. Selections from American literature of the nineteenth century include Herman Melville's "The Fiddler," Bret Harte's "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving, Ambrose Bierce's "The Eyes of the Panther," "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest." More recent stories include Djuna Barnes' "A Night Among the Horses," Ernest Hemingway's "Up in Michigan," Zora Neale Hurston's "Sweat," "To Build a Fire" by Jack London, Theodore Dreiser's "The Lost Phoebe," and "Jesus Christ in Texas" by W. E. B. Du Bois.
Twelve eye-opening, mind-expanding, funny and provocative essays on the implications of artificial intelligence for the way we live and the way we love from New York Times bestselling author Jeanette Winterson
"Talky, smart, anarchic and quite sexy," said Dwight Garner in the New York Times about Jeanette Winterson's latest novel, Frankissstein, which perfectly describes too this new collection of essays on the same subject of AI.
In 12 Bytes, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson, draws on her years of thinking and reading about artificial intelligence in all its bewildering manifestations. In her brilliant, laser focused, uniquely pointed and witty style of story-telling, Winterson looks to history, religion, myth, literature, the politics of race and gender, and computer science, to help us understand the radical changes to the way we live and love that are happening now.
When we create non-biological life-forms, will we do so in our image? Or will we accept the once-in-a-species opportunity to remake ourselves in their image? What do love, caring, sex, and attachment look like when humans form connections with non-human helpers, teachers, sex-workers, and companions? And what will happen to our deep-rooted assumptions about gender? Will the physical body that is our home soon be enhanced by biological and neural implants, keeping us fitter, younger, and connected? Is it time to join Elon Musk and leave Planet Earth?
With wit, compassion and curiosity, Winterson tackles AI's most fascinating talking points, from the algorithms that data-dossier your whole life to the weirdness of backing up your brain.
In June 2010, the editors of The New Yorker announced to widespread media coverage their selection of 20 Under 40--the young fiction writers who are, or will be, central to their generation. The magazine published twenty stories by this stellar group of writers over the course of the summer. They are now collected for the first time in one volume.
The range of voices is extraordinary. There is the lyrical realism of Nell Freudenberger, Philipp Meyer, C. E. Morgan, and Salvatore Scibona; the satirical comedy of Joshua Ferris and Gary Shteyngart; and the genre-bending tales of Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, and Téa Obreht. David Bezmozgis and Dinaw Mengestu offer clear eyed portraits of immigration and identity; Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, ZZ Packer, and Wells Tower offer voice-driven, idiosyncratic narratives. Then there are the haunting sociopolitical stories of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Daniel Alarcón, and Yiyun Li, and the metaphysical fantasies of Chris Adrian, Rivka Galchen, and Karen Russell. Each of these writers reminds us why we read. And each is aiming for greatness: fighting to get and to hold our attention in a culture that is flooded with words, sounds, and pictures; fighting to surprise, to entertain, to teach, and to move not only us but generations of readers to come. A landmark collection, 20 Under 40 stands as a testament to the vitality of fiction today."A vibrant journey through the annals of classic American short stories"
"21 Essential American Short Stories" is a collection of beloved stories that have comprised an important part of the fabric of our culture, from the earliest days of our nation to the twentieth century. Some of the stories, such as Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi," William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," and James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," have been long regarded as literary classics, while others, such as Frank Stockton's "The Lady or the Tiger?" and Ellis Parker Butler's "Pigs Is Pigs," are lesser known but well worth discovering.
The carefully selected stories, each preceded by an illuminating headnote, powerfully illustrate the varied richness of our national literature and history. This beautifully packaged volume, containing the unforgettable classic short stories that evoke our shared American tradition and national identity, makes the perfect gift for the short story aficionado and novice alike.
30 Under 30 is an anthology of thirty top young writers publishing fiction today. Editors Blake Butler and Lily Hoang have compiled a collection of thirty stories from these thirty writers--all creating work on the more innovative side of things; a great opportunity for a reader to dip into their various styles and see which authors to look for more from.
Includes work from authors such as Shane Jones (Light Boxes), Matt Bell (How They Were Found), Joshua Cohen (Witz), and Kathleen Rooney (Live Nude Girl) and twenty-six others breaking ground, many publishing with smaller publishers.
Here is a new voice--new to us--reaching across a gap of three hundred years. Sor (Sister) Juana Inés de la Cruz was acclaimed in her time as "Phoenix of Mexico, America's Tenth Muse"; a generation later she was forgotten. In our century she was rediscovered, her works were reissued, and she is now considered one of the finest Hispanic poets of the seventeenth century. She deserves to be known to English-speaking readers for another reason as well: she speaks directly to our concern for the freedom of women to realize themselves artistically and intellectually.
Her poetry is surprising in its scope and variety. She handled with ease the intricate verse forms of her day and wrote in a wide range of genres. Many of her lyrics reflect the worldliness and wit of the courtly society she moved in before becoming a nun; some, composed to be sung, offer charming glimpses of the native people, their festivities and colorful diversity. Alan Trueblood has chosen, in consultation with Octavio Paz, a generous selection of Sor Juana's writings and has provided an introductory overview of her life and work. The short poems, and excerpts from her play The Divine Narcissus, are accompanied by the Spanish texts on facing pages. Her long philosophical poem, First Dream, is translated in its entirety, as is her famous autobiographical letter to the Bishop of Puebla, which is both a self-defense and a vindication of the right of women to cultivate their minds. The Anthology was conceived as a companion to the English-language edition of Octavio Paz's magisterial study of Sor Juana. On its own, it will be welcomed as the first representative selection in English of her verse and prose.