Yale has announced the eight winners of its international Windham-Campbell Prizes, each of whom will receive $165,000 to support their writing. The awardees in fiction are Tsitsi Dangarembga and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, in nonfiction Margo Jefferson and Emmanuel Iduma, in drama Winsome Pinnock and Sharon Bridgforth, and in poetry Wong May and Zaffar Kunial.
Oregon Public Broadcasing’s Jenn Chávez profiles Street Books, a mobile library run by a small team in Portland to provide books to people experiencing homelessness. Ben Hodgson, one of the library’s first regular patrons, has now co-authored a book, Loaners, about Street Books with its founder Laura Moulton. Toward the end of their book, Hodgson and Moulton offer advise for readers who might be interested in running street libraries in their own communities: “It’s Fun. That’s the purpose, really. Humor and connection.”
UK publisher Virago has acquired the authorized biography of the late sci-fi novelist Ursula K. Le Guin. The book, by Julie Phillips, will be published in the US by Doubleday.
An excerpt from Chloé Cooper Jones’s forthcoming memoir Easy Beauty has been published in the New York Times Magazine. Jones, who has sacral agenesis, writes about a visit to Rome’s Galleria Borghese and contemplates symmetry, order, and what regulates beauty: “Maybe I am dismissing the ancient ideals because they don’t fit the story I tell myself about myself. My body did not fit into any narrative of order, proportion, plan. What was my lineage and where was it celebrated?”
Molly Fischer and Rivka Galchen are joining the New Yorker as staff writers. Most recently, Fischer has worked as a feature writer for New York magazine. Galchen has been a contributor to the New Yorker since 2008.