Between the Covers

Whiting Writers Awards

Five fiction writers, three poets, a playwright and one nonfiction writer earned Whiting Writers Awards this week, which come with a hefty prize of $50,000. The winners were recognized for talent and potential; past winners include Denis Johnson, Colson Whitehead, Jeffrey Eugenides and Kim Edwards.

This year's winners include Mischa Berlinski (right), whose novel Fieldwork BtC has praised more than a few times.

Other winners:

Fiction: Laleh Khadivi, Manuel Munoz, Benjamin Percy, Lysley Tenorio

Plays: Dael Orlandersmith

Nonfiction: Donovan Hohn

Poetry: Rick Hilles, Douglas Kearney, Julie Sheehan

So you want to write a novel...

To me that sounds like a lot of hard, thankless work and definitely something that would interfere with my obsession with The Daily Show, but if you're going to do it, now's the time. Apparently November is National Novel Writing month. What, you don't believe me? Click here! they have a website and everything.

And if you need a more local kick in the pants to get writing, check out Nova Southeastern University's National Novel Writing Month Kickoff Meeting from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday at the Alvin Sherman Library, Research and Information Technology Center at NSU, 3301 College Ave., in Davie. Call 954-262-5477 for more information.

Tony Hillerman

If you haven't seen it, here's the New York Times obituary on mystery writer Tony Hillerman, who died at 83 Sunday. It's a lovely tribute to Hillerman, famous for the popular series of novels set on the Navajo reservation of the Southwest.

If you haven't read Hillerman - and I haven't, I confess, though I know that's crazy, considering how much I love the Southwest - the best place to start is at the beginning, with The Blessing Way, which was published in 1970.

Get personal at Barnes & Noble

New at B&N's online store: "My B&N," which B&N likes to think of as a "fully integrated web experience." I don't know about that, but readers can create profiles around their likes and dislikes of movies, books and music, write about what they're reading now to share recommendations, etc. The site now features updated list-making tools, expanded ratings and reviews features and updates on local store events.

The horror (novel), the horror (novel)

  I will argue forever: Bram Stoker's Dracula is the best horror novel of all time. If you, like me, are a freak for all things vampire, you don't want to miss The New Annotated Dracula, edited by Leslie S. Klinger.  It's Stoker's text with more than 1,500 footnotes by Klinger, who performed a similar miracle with The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. If you've got a vampire nut in the family, he or she would love this as a holiday gift. I'd stake my reputation on it.

And, in the spirit of All Hallow's Eve, soon upon us, check out my interview with James Reese, author of the gothic novel The Dracula Dossier, who appears at 2 p.m. Thursday at the Florida Center for the Book in Fort Lauderdale and on Halloween night at 8 p.m. at Books & Books in the Gables. His novel has a great premise, one rooted in a small, "throw-away" fact he read in a Bram Stoker bio: One of Stoker's acquaintances, an American doctor named Francis Tumblety, was a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. The idea had St. Pete resident Reese (also author of The Book of Shadows, The Book of Spirits and The Witching) off and running. What if, he thought, Stoker found himself in London as the Ripper murders began...and the subsequent adventure inspired him to write Dracula?

Book fair schedule changes

A month or so ago Between the Covers reported that some of the Miami Book Fair's "Evenings with..." events would be held at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. That's all changed now. Here's the latest "Evenings with..." schedule, with all events at Miami Dade College's Wolfson campus, 300 NE Second Ave. in downtown Miami:

Nov. 9: Commentators Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, 7 p.m., Chapman Conference Center

Nov. 10: David Sheff (Beautiful Boy), 8 p.m., Chapman

Nov. 11: Physicist Brian Greene (at right) (Icarus at the Edge of Time), 8 p.m., Chapman

Nov. 12: Celebration of the Life and Work of Will Eisner, 6 p.m., Centre Gallery; Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone), 8 p.m., Chapman

Nov. 13.: Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali, 6 p.m. Auditorium; Gore Vidal, 8 p.m., Chapman

Nov. 14: Cities of Refuge with Russell Banks, Derek Walcott and others, 6 p.m. Chapman; poets Billy Collins (at left), Robert Haas and Mark Strand at 8 p.m., Chapman

Remember: Free tickets are required for all events (except the Will Eisner appreciation); you can download them here starting Wednesday Nov. 5. It's always a good idea to get to the events early to ensure you get a seat, but I'm guessing there won't be too many problems, although the Auditorium is smaller than the Chapman, so if you want to see the celebrity chef you really want to get there early.

What are you reading now?

"As a fiction judge for the 2008 National Book Awards I had to consider 271 books, so I've been since claiming that I'd only be reading nonfiction for the next year. Not a total lie. . . . I was thrilled to see The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham as a finalist in the nonfiction category because I'd been telling anyone who asked for a recommendation that my favorite book of the year was that memoir. Novels I recently adored are Indignation by Philip Roth, The English Major by Jim Harrison, Testimony by Anita Shreve, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum. In the past few days I have devoured two fascinating, word-perfect and bittersweet memoirs, An Exact Replica of A Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken and Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Lee Israel.''

ELINOR LIPMAN, author of My Latest Grievance

Writing seminars during the Miami book fair

So we know Miami Book Fair International,  which is sneaking up on us at an alarming rate (alarming for me, anyway), is all about reading. But it's also - surprise! - about writing. The Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College is offering some shockingly good writing seminars  on Nov. 14 - the Friday the street fair opens - featuring two of the authors who will be appearing: memoirist Honor Moore (at right) and poet Andrei Codrescu.

Moore will teach "Shaping Memory into Memoir," noon-2 p.m. $50.

Codrescu will teach "Writing Poetry with Andrei Codrescu," 3-5 p.m. $75. Class size is limited to 10 people, so you'd better get a move on signing up for this one.

Also on the schedule: "Publishing Boot Camp: Everything You Wanted to Know About Publishing But Were Afraid to Ask" with superagent Sandy Dijkstra, 3-5 p.m. $50.

For more information click here or call 305-237-3940.

Should book critics read the whole book?

A few weeks ago, Roger Ebert of the Sun-Times wrote a review of a film called Tru Loved, which was apparently terrible, even worse than David Lynch's Inland Empire - which took God only knows how many years off my life, and I SLEPT through part of it. What the hell are these donkey headed things, anyway? GOD. Also I guarantee that Tru Loved wasn't 47 hours long nor did people start randomly speaking in Polish during it.

But I digress. Ebert confessed he'd only watched about eight minutes of the movie in his review and then fled the theater in sheer horror. Still, he went ahead and proceeded to trash it anyway, albeit with a disclaimer about what he'd done.

So I was happy to pile on in a collection of brief comments by all the Herald critics - for TV, movies, music, theater and of course books. Because I can't imagine reading 20 pages of a book and going ahead and trashing it. Could you be lazier? And of course you can only afford to be so cavalier if you're a bigwig like Roger Ebert, who has a large and respected body of work and is a pretty darned good critic overall. Anybody else gets canned or at least reprimanded. On a practical note: he gets a lot of space. What do you say if you've only seen eight minutes?

So yeah. Book critics should read the whole book. It's the least you can do to maintain credibility.

I heard the news today, oh boy

Still pining over the genius of John Lennon? Check out TV critic Glenn Garvin's review of Philip Norman's scathing John Lennon: The Life, and see if you're brave enough to read that portrait of the artist as a young s.o.b.