“The annual award of $5,000 goes to an author for a meritorious book published in the previous year for children or young adults. Scott O'Dell established this award to encourage other writers--particularly new authors--to focus on historical fiction. He hoped in this way to increase the interest of young readers in the historical background that has helped to shape their country and their world.” WorldWayYearsChildrenBookCountryYoungInterestFictionFocusReaderShapesAdultsIncreaseHistoricalYoung AdultBackgroundsAwardsHistorical FictionAnnualsDellPrevious Years Author:Scott O'Dell
“My stuff gets published in some countries as fiction and in some countries as fantasy. It's just where they think it will do best in the bookshops.” ThinkingCountryStuffFictionFantasyBookshops Author:Neil Gaiman
“If all stories are fiction, fiction can be true -- not in detail or fact, but in some transformed version of feeling. If there is a memory of paradise, paradise can exist, in some other place or country dimensionally reminiscent of our own. The sad stories live there too, but in that country, we know what they mean and why they happened. We make our way back from them, finding the way through a bountiful wilderness we begin to understand. Years are nothing: Story conquers all distance.” IfsKnowsWayYearsMeanCountryFactsStoriesFeelingsMemoriesFictionHappenedFindingsDistanceDetailsVersionsBeing TrueConquerParadiseWildernessTransformedSad Story Author:Jayne Anne Phillips
“This modernizing experiment seems to have something diabolic about it. Everything that was becomes rejected in the name of a modernity that assumes the nature of a fiction, an illusion, a devilish apparition. To a greater or lesser extent this applies to all the postcommunist countries.” CountrySeemsNamesFictionGreaterIllusionAssumingExperimentsRejectedModernityApparitionsDevilish Book:Fado Source: Fado
“Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction” WorldWayYearsLooksCountryMomentsRememberFictionNovelGenerationsUniversalPoeticDefiningExaminationLandmarksComaBeijingDefining Moments Author:Tash Aw
“The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.” CountryStatesSeemsEasyUnitedFictionUnited StatesDemocraticVariousFantasticFiction Writers Author:John Updike
“The movement for women's liberation was about an emotional transformation, an explosion, a feeling all over the country that things must be different, and ideas about how they should be. I think fiction can capture that kind of thing better than other genres because in fiction you can explore the feelings of your characters - the before and the after.” ThinkingShouldKindIdeasDifferentCountryCharacterFeelingsFictionMovementEmotionalTransformationLiberationGenreCaptureExplosions Author:Alix Kates Shulman
“I was on a panel with light skinned Blacks and a famous gay science fiction writer, who were complaining about how Blacks are against gays and light skinned Blacks and how intolerant Blacks are of different groups. My position was that Blacks were among the most humanistic, tolerant groups in the country and that across the street from my house in Oakland was one inhabited by White gays.” DifferentCountryLightHouseWhiteFictionGroupsStreetsPositionGayScience FictionComplainingFiction WritersHumanisticOakland Author:Ishmael Reed
“Politically I also don't believe anymore that we can only have one voice to a story, it's like having one radio station to represent a country. You want the politics of any complicated situation to be complicated in a book of fiction or nonfiction.” WantBelieveBookCountryStoriesVoiceFictionSituationDon't BelieveRadioComplicatedStationsNonfictionRadio Stations Author:Michael Ondaatje
“Fiction is more dangerous than nonfiction because it can seduce better. I think we all know this, know that deeper truths can be approached in fiction than in fact. There are risks for the reader, because after reading certain books you find you have changed irreversibly. There are risks for writers: in China, now, and Ethiopia and other countries right now, writers face real persecution.” ThinkingKnowsBookRealCountryFactsFacesCertainReadingFictionRiskDangerousChangedReaderRight NowChinaDeeperNonfictionOther CountriesPersecutionSeducingEthiopiaYou Have Changed Author:Chris Abani
“I love really exploring... you know, a cop drama for example is a great way to explore class in this country and explore, you know, really, identity in the country and who we are in a way that is extremely exciting, but it's also real, you know, it's also real people and real drama. The same with the military. I mean, a good science fiction story is also great.” PeopleKnowsWayMeanRealCountryStoriesFictionClassMilitaryExampleIdentityDramaExcitingScience FictionWho We AreCopExploringReal YouGood ScienceFiction Stories Author:Ethan Hawke
“People talk about [Bashar] Assad running Syria. He doesn't control his own country. He's down to about 20, 25 percent of the country. What is this fiction that he is somehow the only person who can save Syria? There's - with Assad there, there is no Syria. So that's what the Iranians and the Russians need to really begin to focus in on.” PeopleNeedsPersonsCountryRunningFictionFocusPercentSyriaAssad Author:John F. Kerry
“Incidentally, I am intrigued by how many European and Latin American writers expressed their political views in the columns they routinely wrote or write in the popular press, like Saramago, Vargas Llosa, and Eco. This strikes me as one way of avoiding opinionated fiction, and allowing your imagination a broader latitude. Similarly, fiction writers from places like India and Pakistan are commonly expected to provide primers to their country's histories and present-day conflicts. But we haven't had that tradition in Anglo-America.” WayWritingCountryAmericaPoliticalImaginationViewsFictionHavensConflictTraditionIndiaPressesExpectedStrikesOne WayLatinAllowingAvoidingPakistanColumnsLatin AmericaIntriguedPresent DayFiction WritersEcoOpinionatedAmerican WriterLatitudePolitical ViewLatin AmericanIndia And Pakistan Author:Pankaj Mishra
“Southern Appalachians have been ridiculed since the country began. In fiction, they're usually depicted in a cartoonish manner. The region is poor, and very suspicious of outsiders, so there's a sort of 'us versus them' situation. They're easy to poke fun at.” Has BeensCountryFunEasyPoorFictionSituationRegionsSouthernOutsidersVersusSuspiciousPoke Author:Barbara Kingsolver
“The international community lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy. Unfortunately, it is a fiction. There is no such thing. Different countries have different histories, geographies, necessities, and interests. There's no natural, inherent, or enduring international community.” DifferentCountryLyingInterestCommunityNaturalFictionPolicyEndureInternationalForeign PolicyInherentGeographyInternational CommunityDifferent Countries Author:Charles Krauthammer