Monday, 8 September 2014

Eleanor Catton will pay fellow writers to read, the grant might be called "Lancewood"

From the Guardian:
Eleanor Catton, the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker prize, has announced that she will put the money from her latest awards win towards establishing a grant that will give writers "time to read" [...]. 
The grant has yet to be given a name, "in case a nice philanthropist hears about this and would like to lend their name and support to the project", but Catton said that the word which keeps coming to her as a possibility "is the horoeka, or lancewood, a native tree that begins its life defensively, with sharp rigid leaves and a narrow bearing, and at a certain point transforms into a shape that is confident, open and entirely new – so different, in fact, that the young and old versions of the tree look absolutely unalike. That is what I believe that reading can do." 
Catton told the Guardian she intended that writers winning the grant would be awarded $3,000 each for "time to read". "My idea is that if a writer is awarded a grant, they will be given the money with no strings attached except that after three months they will be expected to write a short piece of non-fiction about their reading (what was interesting to them, what they learned) that will be posted online so that others can benefit from their reading too," she said.

No comments:

Post a Comment