Chanelle Benz’s THE GONE DEAD is longlisted for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and Lydia Davis’ ESSAYS ONE is longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. In their announcement PEN stated that “these longlisted books are dynamic, diverse, and thought-provoking examples of literary excellence”.

The Whiting Foundation announces Jess Row as one of six recipients of the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant for WHITE FLIGHTS: RACE, FICTION, AND THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION, which will be published by Graywolf Press in 2019. This grant supports writers as they complete a book of well-researched and innovative nonfiction.

A SIMPLE FAVOR based on the bestselling book by Darcey Bell will be released on September 14th, 2018. The film stars Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Henry Golding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAqMlh0b2HU&t=17s

The American Academy in Rome announced Kiristin Valdez Quade as a 2018 Fellow in Literature. She won the Rome Prize for her forthcoming novel. This highly competitive fellowship supports advanced independent work in writing, and includes months’ long residence in Rome.

The Washington National Opera in D.C. presented their adaptation of “Proving Up” by Karen Russell (from her collection VAMPIRES IN THE LEMON GROVE). The Washington Post praised it as “a work for its time: Its subject, at bottom, is the promises politicians make to the American people, and the staggering human cost to those who don’t realize that their efforts go against their own self-interest.”

The film adaptation of Darcey Bell’s A SIMPLE FAVOR began filming in Toronto on Monday.  The film is directed by Paul Feig and the studio is Lionsgate.  Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively, and Michael Golding have the major roles.

“SUBMISSION,“  adapted and directed by Richard Levine, will have its world premiere at the LA Film Festival on June 19, 2017. The cast includes Stanley Tucci, Addison Timlin, Kyra Sedgwick, and Janeane Garofalo.

Kevin Canty’s “God’s Work” has been selected for THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2017, edited by Meg Wolitzer. The story was originally published in The New Yorker, and the collection will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October.

An excerpt from Johanna Stoberock’s novel PIGS has been selected as runner up for the 2016 Calvino prize judged this year by Jonathan Lethem.  This international prize honors two writers of outstanding pieces of fiction in the fabulist, experimentalist style of Italo Calvino.

THE NORTH WATER  has been selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2016.  The list includes five works of fiction and five works of nonfiction.