Thursday, August 27, 2009

NEA Fellowships for Literary Translations

The National Endowment for the Arts recently awarded fellowships to 16 literary translators. We are very happy to report that Brian Henry is one of these recipients. Brian Henry's translation of a poem by Ales Steger will appear in our next issue (vol. 6, no. 2). The grant is to support his translation of Steger's essay collection, Berlin, from Slovenian.

Congratulations!

Monday, August 24, 2009

Ninth Letter at P&W's Lit MagNet

Ninth Letter's new design gets noted in Poets & Writers Sept/Oct. issue as part of their regular Literary MagNet news round up. Also featured in this issue of P&W is an interview with Martin Riker, Associate Director of U of I's Dalkey Archive Press.

Have YOU seen our new look? Get your copy of our Spring/Summer 2009 issue today!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Eggers & Butler

We love passing on good news and two fiction contributors from our first issue (spring/summer 04), Dave Eggers and Robert Olen Butler, have new books. Check them out.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is available now.

"...what Dave Eggers has found in the Katrina mud is the full-fleshed story of a single family, and in telling that story he hits larger targets with more punch than those who have already attacked the thematic and historic giants of this disaster. It’s the stuff of great narrative nonfiction." - Timothy Egan, The New York Times

Hell by Robert Olen Butler will be released on Sept. 1.

"No writer in America today can be said to surpass Butler in the eating-his-cake-and-having-it-too category: He's literary and entertaining, serious and funny. Within his clear and fluent narratives, there usually nestles complexity, if you care to look for it." - Chauncey Mabe

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

New Book Round-Up

Check out these new books from 9L contributors:

The Signal by Ron Carlson (vol. 1, no. 2 & vol. 5, no. 1).

"The Signal takes us into terrain that’s stunning and terrible. In doing so, it becomes both an elegy to a broken marriage and a heart-stopping, suspenseful thriller. It’s a difficult journey, but relax: with Ron Carlson, you really are in expert hands." - Jennifer Gilmore, The New York Times.

Tryst by Angie Estes (vol. 6, no. 1).

"Gleeful and gorgeous, delighted by puns and other wordplay (including words from French, Latin and Italian), Estes’s fast-paced free verse, rich with internal rhyme, takes rightful pride in the beauties it flaunts and explains." - Stephen Burt, The New York Times

Fugue State by Brian Evenson. The collections contains "A Pursuit," which was originally published in Ninth Letter's vol. 2, no. 2 issue.

"In his new collection, Fugue State, Evenson's stories most often serve as detective-style investigations into the horror of everyday speech. His characters cling to sentences, phrases and words with the intensity that usually accompanies unrequited love." - Ross Simonini, The Los Angeles Times

Archicembalo by G.C. Waldrep (vol. 4, no. 2).

"Waldrep’s title denotes an antique keyboard instrument with 24, or many more, keys per octave. Notoriously hard to play, such instruments made subtle and challenging music, with notes a conventional score could not include. Waldrep’s sometimes bewildering, often exciting prose poems make their own unconventional music, replete with slippages, repetitions, suggestions." - Stephen Burt, The New York Times

Monday, August 03, 2009

Printer's Ball Interviews

We had a great time at Printer's Ball. Thanks to Adam Levin for representing 9L in the Literary Death Match! Amy Guth interviewed various editors at the event, including our very own Jodee Stanley, for Chicago Subtext.