Please note, the postmark deadline for submitting the entry form is Friday, June 15, 2007.

Richard Powers (top), Photo: Robin Platzer John Leonard, Photo © 2007 Nancy Crampton

The Moving Finger is a new talk-piece about literature, empathy, and collective forgetting in the age of blogs, written by Richard Powers, and performed by Richard Powers and John Leonard. The performance will be followed by a public conversation with Powers and Leonard.  

Tickets: $10 members; $15 nonmembers; Online ticketing: Visit ww.themorgan.org
Box Office Telephone: Call 212.685.0008, ext. 560 to charge your order

eNewsletter subscribers can receive the member's price of $10.00 if they identify themselves by phone as a National Book Foundation eNewsletter subscriber when calling the box office. For online ticketing, go through the process as if a member. There is no need to enter any member/subscription number.

Gary Shteyngart (top), Kurt Andersen (center), Jessica Hagedorn (bottom)

• May 17: Gary Shteyngart, with Jessica Hagedorn - sold out
• May 30: Kurt Andersen, with Jessica Hagedorn - a few seats left

For additional information please visit, www.nationalbook.org or www.bam.org.

Shelf-talkers, author residency handbooks, and reading hotspot maps will be available, as well as the opportunity to order our brand new book medallions.

Information will be available to librarians on how their institution can receive a grant to develop public programming for the national centennial of Mark Twain's death, to be commemorated in 2010. In addition, Harold Augenbraum, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, will speak at a forum called: What Works: Library Author Events, based on his experience as the former head of the Mercantile Library of New York.

For information about attending BookExpo America visit www.bookexpoamerica.com.

To read an excerpt from Eat the Document visit www.nationalbook.org.

Nathaniel Mackey won the 26th Annual Northern California Book Award in the poetry category for his latest book Splay Anthem, which also won the 2006 National Book Award in the same genre. This collection weaves together two ongoing serial poems Mackey has been writing for over twenty years.

To read an excerpt from Splay Anthem visit www.nationalbook.org

Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, which was a 2006 National Book Award Finalist in Nonfiction, recently won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. The Looming Tower is a look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America.

To read an excerpt from The Looming Tower visit, www.nationalbook.org.

For the past three months, BookUpNYC, the Foundation's pilot program aimed at encouraging middle school age students to read for pleasure, has been meeting weekly in after-school programs in the South Bronx, Harlem and the Lower East Side. On May 19^th, students from all three sites will come together for a reading, booksigning and party featuring one of their instructors, novelist Terrence Cheng. Cheng, the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a Barnes and Noble Discover Award Honorable Mention for his novel, Sons of Heaven, is publishing his first young adult novel, Deep in the Mountains: An Encounter With Zhu Qizhan.

In the book, a young Chinese-American graffiti artist living in the Bronx commits an act of vandalism and is sent to live with an uncle in Shanghai, where he will work and pay off his debt. While in Shanghai, he has a life-changing encounter with the revered painter Zhu Qizhan.

Watson-Guptill, the publisher of Cheng's book, is hosting the party at the China 2000 Fine Art Gallery, where works of Zhu Qizhan will be on display. BookUp NYC participants will each receive a free copy of Deep in the Mountains, courtesy of Watson-Guptill, as well as have the opportunity to see the paintings referred to in the book.

NBF eNewsletter recipients are welcome to attend this event, and meet Terrence Cheng and some of our young book lovers.

The party will be held on Saturday, May 19^th, from 2:00 - 5:00p.m. at China 2000 Fine Art Gallery, 5 East 57^th St., 9^th Floor. If you plan to attend, please RSVP at (212) 588-1198. For more information on BookUpNYC, visit nationalbook.org.

• May 10, An Evening with National Book Award Winner Richard Powers and author John Leonard at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City
• May 19, Book Party with BookUpNYC participants at China 2000 Fine Art Gallery, NYC
  
• May 31 - June 3, Visit the National Book Foundation at BookExpo, Booth #1342 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City

Dates for the 2007 National Book Awards

• June 15^th, National Book Awards Entry form deadline
• August 15^th, Book submission deadline
• October 10^th, Announcement of this year's National Book Award Finalists
• November 12^th, National Book Awards Week Begins with 5 Under 35
• November 13^th, National Book Awards Teen Press Conference
• November 13^th, National Book Awards Finalist Reading
• November 14^th, 58^th National Book Awards