Tattered Essence

The winner of the 2009 Nobel literature prize has been announced. It is Herta Mueller.

She is a little-known Romanian-born author. She was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain.

Some think that the Nobel committee has been too “eurocentric” in picking winners.

Mueller is the 12th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature

Amazon has awarded PEN American Center a $25,000 grant. The grant is to further develop its online resources to better support freedom of expression throughout the world.

It will help fund PEN’s international Freedom to Write human rights programming, its national Campaign for Core Freedoms, and the dissemination of PEN’s political and literary public events.

A portion of the grant will also be used to support the PEN Translation Fund

Atheneum Books for Young Readers has bought world English rights to a collaboration between Judith Viorst (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) and Lane Smith (The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales). They will create a chapter book called Lulu and the Brontosaurus, to be published in September 2010.

Disney Book Group has acquired a three-book series from YA author Maureen Johnson at auction. The series features an American high school student attending a London boarding school for her junior year. A series of murders begins to take place across the city—on the exact dates and in the exact style of Jack the Ripper—and her ties to the killer bring her in contact with a secret paranormal branch of the British police. The first book in the series will be published in summer 2011, with a new book following each subsequent summer.

Putnam’s Sons has acquired North American rights for picture book author/artist Richard Ungar’s middle-grade debut, Time Snatchers, at auction in a two-book deal. Time Snatchers stars a 14-year-old orphan and conscripted time thief, from 2061 New Beijing, who steals treasures from the past for a mafioso named Uncle. The book is currently planned for fall 2011.

Here is something interesting. Authors J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer as comic book heroines. It seems that their bios are being done as graphic novels. They are scheduled for release in December and November by US publisher Bluewater Productions.

The publisher is currently in the process of selecting two other prominent female authors for its comic book series. Up for the spots are: Toni Morrison, Ayn Rand, Margaret Atwood, Ursula LeGuin, Harper Lee, Anne Rice, Beatrix Potter and Virginia Woolf.

The books are being published as part of its Female Force series, which has already featured biographies of Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama and Hilary Clinton.

It happened before it even got started really. Quartet Press is no more. They were supposed to launch in the fall. But now they won’t. Why? One member of the press stated that the financial structure the group had envisioned was flawed and ultimately would not work. Sad news for all involved.