After being rejected repeatedly over ten years by nearly every major publishing house in New York, Jennifer Donnelly beat out favorite Mark Haddon for the Carnegie Medal, the most prestigious prize in children’s literature. (via Mark)

Kurt Vonnegut held a family art show and was mobbed by fans in Indianapolis.

Time has a list of 10 Trashy Novels for the summer. Strangely, Daniel Clowes is included.

Those quirky hacks over at The Scotsman examine operas written by authors, pointing out that Graham Greene’s one and only opera, Our Man in Havana, has only been staged once since 1987 — last week by the Trinity College of Music. And apparently Ian McEwan has produced an oratorio with Michael Berkeley. The oratorio, Or Should We Die?, was composed in 1983 and dealt with the threat of nuclear war.

Maud notes that The Great Gatsby is being serialized in the New York Times. As a Fitzgerald fan, I commend this decision and recommend that it be read concurrently with Get Out, You Damned, Saddam Hussein’s fourth novel, now being serialized in Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arab newspaper. An Iraqi critic, Ali Abdel-Amir, notes that Saddam “was completely out of touch with actual reality, and novel writing gave him the chance to live in delusions.”