This year’s New Yorker Festival took place last weekend.  Twitter fans at the festival used the hashtag, #tnyfestival.

On Saturday, Joan Acocella (author of the vampire essay, “In the Blood”) moderated the Vampires Revival panel. On board to speak were philosophy professor Noel Carroll, horror novelist Stephen King, vampire film director Matt Reeves, and Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. A video preview of the panel discussion is embedded above.

Several dozen King fans waited outside the venue only to be disappointed by King’s unwillingness to sign books. As he walked away with his arms in the air, he told the crowd: “I can’t sign guys, I got to get something to eat.” Alas, just because he’s a “king” doesn’t mean he isn’t human.

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Submissions are now being accepted for the fifth annual Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The award carries a $10,000 honorarium and has an illustrious group of winners, including Richard Bausch, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Diaz.

The finalists will be revealed in September, and the award will be delivered at a gala ceremony in Dayton on November 7th, 2010. Publishers interested in submitting should check the award guidelines–the submission deadline is March 31st, 2010.

Here’s more from the release: “Publishers may submit English-language books first published in 2009 for consideration for the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Submissions may address the theme of peace on a variety of levels, such as between individuals, among families and communities, or among nations, religions, or ethnic groups.”

What are the most popular signed books of the year? The answer might surprise you. On the list of the 25 Bestselling Signed Books on AbeBooks from last year, a National Book Award winner outsold a man who walked on the moon.

The top book was the National Award winning novel by Colum McCann, “Let the Great World Spin.” The book “Magnificent Desolation” by astronaut Buzz Aldrin came in 17th place.

Here’s an excerpt from the list: “Our list of the bestselling signed books of 2009 provides a cross-section of the year’s major literary events and books that captured the imagination of countless readers. The top 25 features three titles from authors who passed away during the year–two from John Updike and one from Frank McCourt–plus critically-acclaimed novels, such as Hilary Mantel‘s Booker-winner Wolf Hall, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.” (Via Ron Charles)

Today Details magazine unveiled the 25 Greatest Gen X Books of All Time, giving GalleyCat an exclusive peek at the picks. The colorful list includes everything from “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz to “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus” by Rick Perlstein.

GalleyCat caught up with Details‘ Deputy Editor Chis Raymond to find out more about the list. He explained the cutoff age for writers: “After a lot of heated discussion, we ended up settling on 1960 as the cut-off date. That, of course, meant guys like William T. Vollmann didn’t make the cut, which launched a whole new round of arguments. But that’s what makes the project fun. We wanted to point out that there were some literary giants who were born after John Updike and Norman Mailer. But you can’t name every one.”

Finally, he argued against the stereotype that men don’t read books: “I don’t buy that argument. Men may not buy as many books as women, but we read. We read the the Wall Street Journal and Malcolm Gladwell‘s New Yorker stories and Bill Simmons’ column on ESPN.com. If a story’s good enough to merit our attention, we’ll find it and read it. Just look at the features in men’s magazines. They’re often much meatier than the fare you find in women’s magazines. What does that tell you? That guys aren’t afraid to spend an hour reading a great piece of writing … And because Details readers are sophisticated when it comes to modern media, they can appreciate the confessions of Motley Crue every bit as much as Dexter Filkins on the Iraq War.”

In honor of Bastille Day, author Matt Stewart will publish “The French Revolution” entirely on Twitter, estimating it will take 3,700 tweets to micro-blog his 480,000-character debut novel–tweeting at the revolutionary rate of one tweet every 15 minutes.

In comparison, Charles Dickens serialized his French revolutionary novel, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in a series of weekly installments. For readers less inclined to read an entire novel on Twitter, Stewart has a Scribd version as well.

Here’s more from his website: “‘The French Revolution’ is an epic San Francisco tale, exploring the haywire extremes of the French Revolution within the microcosm of a dysfunctional family. Zany, tragic, imaginative, funny—the incisive wit and wordplay of Junot Diaz meets the multi-layered precision plotting of Jonathan Franzen.”

In a new partnership with the Pen American Center, the Anchor Books imprint announced that the annual “O. Henry Prize Stories” anthology as the “PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.”

The collection has been published since 1919. This year’s contest will be judged by A. S. Byatt, Anthony Doerr, and Tim O’Brien, culling winners from thousands of short stories.

Here’s more from the release: “The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 is studded with great writers such as Junot Diaz, Nadine Gordimer, Ha Jin, and Paul Theroux, as well as new voices. The winning stories feature locales as diverse as post-war Vietnam, a retirement community in Cape Town, South Africa, an Egyptian desert village, and a permanently darkened New York City.” (Via NYT)

The shortlist for the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was just announced. Judges combed through 146 novels, picking the finalists for the £100,000–reportedly “the world’s most valuable literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English.”

Last year, Rawi Hage won the award for “De Niro’s Game.” The 2009 shortlist includes:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Dominican / American) Riverhead Books
Ravel by Jean Echenoz (French) in translation. The New Press
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Pakistani / British) Hamish Hamilton / Harcourt / Doubleday Canada
The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland (American) Dial Press
The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen (Norwegian) in translation. John Murray Publishers
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt (American) Bloomsbury Publishing
Animal’s People by Indra Sinha (Indian / British) Simon & Schuster
Man Gone Down by Micheal Thomas (American) Grove / Atlantic

(Via Three Percent)

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What do Joan Acocella, Paul Auster, David Markson, Don DeLillo, John Updike, William Vollmann, Deborah Eisenberg, Stephen Sondheim, Reynolds Price, Richard Ford, Garrison Keillor, Jim Harrison, Mary Gordon, John Corigliano and many, many more luminaries in the literary, artistic and music worlds have in common? They all sat on the stage at the American Academy of Arts & Letters‘ Annual Ceremonial, held in the organization’s Harlem-area auditorium to honor the best and brightest in the arts. Some, like Gold Medal for Fiction winner Updike, have been members for nearly half a century; others, like Dana Spiotta, Junot Diaz, Tony D’Souza and Adam Rapp, received generous monetary awards honoring their recent writing-related outputs.

It may just be my own biased viewpoint that makes me think the Academy is a well-kept secret within the current state of the arts community, but then, it might not: while the turnout was strong, it was decidedly bereft of publishing professionals and those under the age of 35. And Academy President Ezra Laderman‘s opening remarks, highlighting how “we’re in an extraordinary time for the arts” thanks to questions about intellectual property, the decline of a proper arts curricula in any American school and eschewing artistic endeavors for market forces, had just the barest whiff of the old school. And yet it was remarkably clear how much the Academy, and its members, care about the arts and about ensuring that promising writers and artists continue the non-profit’s legacy, and how old school values produce a certain dignity that’s easy to admire. One need only listen to Updike’s spare remarks about how his induction into the Academy as its then-youngest member helped further his career by exposing him to peers as well as “magi-like writers” whom he revered. Bestowing awards onto Diaz and Spiotta is a step to the future, and I look with interest to see which younger writers the Academy recognizes from here on in.

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That’s about my favorite line from Robert McCrum‘s summary of the 2nd annual Cartagena Literary Festival, the result of Colombia’s quest for a fresh international narrative coinciding with the Hay Festival‘s ambitions to take off from Wales and bring contemporary literature to the wider world.According to Hay festival director Peter Florence, the choice of Cartagena is a no-brainer: the secret of a successful literary festival ‘is all to do with location’. Eventually, Florence says he wants to launch similar venues in the US.

Speaking of Hay UK, he admits to McCrum ‘we have been Anglocentric for too long. The fact is: we’re 20 years old; we’ve got a big audience; we have to go global.’ Last week’s sold-out events at Cartagena vindicated Florence’s smooth PR. There were appearances from Wole Soyinka, Junot Diaz, Manuel Rivas, DBC Pierre and rising stars Jorge Volpi and Tishani Doshi. Oh and don’t forget Christopher Hitchens; he was the opening speaker.