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Tag: Pulitzer Prize

  • Toni Morisson’s New Novel ‘God Help The Child’ Arrives In April

    It’s going to be a long six-month wait for fans of the prolific author Toni Morrison. Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced last Tuesday that Morrison’s new book “God Help the Child,” will be released next year on April 30.

    The Nobel-prize winning author’s new book was described as a “searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult.” The latest novel centers on Bride, a bold and confident woman whose successes in life stems from her beauty. Along the way, Bride encounters Rain, a mysterious white child who forms a strong bond with the book’s protagonist.

    Knopf-Doubleday Chairman Sonny Mehta described the book as a “compact, fierce work,” that’s sure to keep fans compulsively reading until they reach the final pages of the novel.

    Morrison, an 83-year old native of Ohio gained prominence after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the American Book Award back in 1987 for Beloved, which was adapted into a feature film starring Oprah Winfrey. She’s mostly known for her richly detailed characters that are grounded in reality. Some of her papers can be found as part of Princeton University’s permanent collection.

    The 83-year-old author shows no sign of stopping as she releases her 11th book next year. The award-winning author tackles the struggles related to race and history in her fictional books. She’s one of the best known authors in the historical fiction genre with novels like The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Jazz, all featuring stories that are set in different periods of American History.

    Aside from countless accolades and awards for her novels, Morrison also won a Grammy in 2008 for Best Spoken Word Album for Children. She has also written three children’s books with her younger son, artist Slade Morrison who passed away in 2010.

  • Decorated Poet Maxine Kumin Dies

    Decorated Poet Maxine Kumin Dies

    One for Life, One for Death”- Maxine Kumin

    It is with much regret that we relay the Associated Press’s report that Maxine Kumin, Pulitzer Prize winner and onetime poetry consultant to the Library of Congress has died at the age of 88.

    Born Maxine Winokur in Philadelphia, PA on June 6, 1925, Kumin was a committed writer and lover of nature who consistently supported the women writer population. She also worked tirelessly to advocate social justice and animal rights.

    Among an immense catalog of poetry books, essays and novels, Kumin’s long list of accomplishments include winning the Harvard Medal, the Los Angeles Times Poetry Award and establishing a new poetry of master of fine arts program at New England College in Henniker, N.H.

    Kumin was praised for her personal poems that did not smother the reader with an overly emotional outpour. Nicknamed “Roberta Frost,” she helped the reader visualize scenes of life–often in nature– with clear and vivid prose.

    Kumin experienced a near-death experience in nature in 1998 resulting from a spooked horse incident, but she survived, sustaining a broken neck.

    Maxine Kumin died peacefully at her home after a year of failing heath.

    Grace

    Hens have their gravel; gravel sticks
    The way it should stick, in the craw.
    And stone on stone is tooth
    For grinding raw.

    And grinding raw, I learn from this
    To fill my crop the way I should.
    I put down pudding stone
    And find it good.

    I find it good to line my gut
    With tidy octagons of grit.
    No loophole and no chink
    Make vents in it.

    And in it vents no slime or sludge;
    No losses sluice, no terrors slough.
    God, give me appetite
    for stone enough.

    -Maxine Kumin, 1961

    Image via Wiki Commons

  • Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer-Winning Author, Dies at 62

    Pulitzer-winning author Oscar Hijuelos died on Saturday in Manhattan at age 62. According to his wife, writer and editor Lori Marie Carlson, the Cuban-American writer collapsed on a tennis court and never regained consciousness.

    Hijuelos won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1990 for his book The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. He was the first Latino to be awarded what is perhaps the most distinguished prize in the literary world.

    Hijuelos was born in New York City in 1951 to Cuban immigrant parents. He was said to have been more American-Cuban than Cuban-American. He often wrote about the immigrant experience.

    The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love centers around two brothers – Cesar and Nestor Castillo – who immigrated to the US from Cuba in 1949. The two musicians settled in New York City, and through their story, Hijuelos offered readers a rich glimpse of Cuban-American life in the 1950s.

    The novel was adapted to film in 1992 and to a musical stage play in 2005.

    Hijuelos graduated from the City University of New York in 1975, and earned his M.A. in creative writing a year later. From 1977 to 1984, he worked in an advertising agency by day and wrote fiction by night.

    His first novel, Our House in the Last World, was published in 1983, and told the story of a Cuban-American family living in New York’s Spanish Harlem in the 1940s.

    In 1985, Hijuelos won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship that allowed him to focus full time on researching the 1950s Cuban music that would feature so heavily in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.

    He went on to write several more novels and, in 1992, published his memoir: Thoughts Without Cigarettes.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Huffington Post Series Wins Pulitzer

    The Huffington Post senior military correspondent David Wood’s ten-part series “Beyond the Battlefield,” which documents the lives of severely wounded combat veterans, has won the Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting.


    Wood’s win is the first Pulitzer for the AOL-owned Huffington Post, a self-described internet newspaper, and is significant in the award organization’s recognition of online-only news sources. The 7-year-old Huffington Post, which began mostly as a news aggregator with little original reporting, hired Wood in 2011, in its shift towards more original content. Rem Rieder, editor of the American Journalism Review, comments that it is “terrific that there are emerging newish outlets where not only talented young reporters, but experienced older reporters, have the chance to showcase ambitious work” – and the Pulitzer is proof of the emerging legitimacy of web-based journalism.

    Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, states, “We are delighted and deeply honored by the award, which recognizes both David’s exemplary piece of purposeful journalism and HuffPost’s commitment to original reporting that affects both the national conversation and the lives of real people. From the beginning, one of the core pillars of HuffPost’s editorial philosophy has been to use narrative and storytelling to put flesh and blood on data and statistics, and to help bear witness to the struggles faced by millions of Americans. We are very grateful to have won for this series, the culmination of David Wood’s long career as a military correspondent, and an affirmation that great journalism is thriving on the Web.”

    Wood, 66, got his start in journalism as an editor for the Pioneer Press in Illinois in 1970, and was previously a Pulitzer Prize finalist, covering wars spanning Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Central America since 1977, before his most recent coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding his “Beyond the Battlefield” series, Wood commented that veterans “want to tell their story because they view their wounds as medals of honor, symbols of their sacrifice – They’re all connected and it’s really interesting, and I just feel so, so proud that they accepted me into their community and let me tell their stories,” adding that “telling their stories just became a huge mission of honor for me.”

    The award of the Pulitzer is also indicative of the shift in how news media is produced, and Wood, who began his career in the realm of “old media,” states that he feels a “sense of energy” in the Huffington Post newsroom, and that he “never had as much support and encouragement and professional editing along the way,” while piecing together his series. Wood also names

    Rieder adds, “I think it’s very healthy to see the Pulitzers have moved, albeit slowly, from a solely print focus – The world has changed dramatically. There’s an awful lot of exciting developments with digital news operations.” The prize certainly has done something for the legitimacy of the oft-derided Huffington Post.