Around the Word

From prizes to ePaper, here's news for fiction and nonfiction aficionados alike:

• Pop the champagne! Mario Vargas Llosa—novelist, essayist and playwright—is this year's Nobel Laureate in Literature. The Swedish Academy announced the award today, citing the Peruvian writer's "cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat." Llosa is the first South American to win the prize since the Colombian novelist Gabríel Garcia Márquez was crowned with literary laurels in 1982. Garcia Márquez's masterly acceptance speech, "The solitude of Latin America," is the lynchpin in his new collection of speeches, I Didn't Come to Give a Speech, to be released October 29. According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, the book follows his public speaking career from his high school graduation address though orations on nuclear proliferation, ecological disasters, youth in Latin America, and other topics of civic concern.

• How much is a great speech worth? The New York MTA got flak from PIX 11 reporter Greg Mocker for advertising for a $100,000 speechwriter in the midst of layoffs and scalebacks. Speechwriter Cynthia Starks admits it's bad PR, but wants to know: aren't speechwriters worth their weight in gold? Communications expert Mark Folie has weighed in on her blog, and we're curious to hear your thoughts as well.

• Here's "20 under 40," nonfiction style. Inspired by the New Yorker's fiction it-list, the New Haven Review is giving nonfiction writers their slice of the pie. n+1 founder Keith Gessen, poet Dan Chiasson, ESPN contributor Chuck Klosterman are among the scribes the editors have tapped for the honor. What illustrious ink slingers would you add to the list?

• We like the sound of this new reading app: Instapaper. The app, described in Capital New York, allows users to bookmark articles they find online and read them in a custom template that strips away distracting formatting and hyperlinks—and lets you access your "clippings" sans WiFi. Ex-Tumblr technologist Marco Arment developed Instapaper to smooth his own smart phone reading, and has since attracted 800,000 users.

• Yesterday, we heard that the Washington Post's former inside-DC gossip columnist and national reporter Mary Ann Akers would be co-authoring Rep. Patrick Kennedy's addiction memoir. Today, FishbowlDC reports she'll be taking a leave from the paper—the full internal memo is here.