Award Winner! Uncreative Writing Wins the A.S.A.P. Book Prize!

Congratulations to Kenneth Goldsmith, whose book Uncreative Writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age was recently awarded Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (A.S.A.P) Book Award.

Here is the announcement from A.S.A.P.

Uncreative Writing was praised by prize committee members for its clear and engaging prose, its theoretical savvy, and its unique and riveting perspective on teaching creating writing by turning to the internet and digital environments that allow students to practice and analyze the implications of techniques such as cutting and pasting, databasing, identity ciphering, and programming. Goldsmith uses sources as diverse as courtroom testimony, robo-poetics, and Twitter to teach students fundamentals of poetic form. As noted in book commentary, Goldsmith substitutes for authenticity a method of appropriation, which he says deals “a knockout blow to notions of traditional authorship.” It does not, however, deal a knockout blow to art: the results are in fact astounding, and book prize committee members noted the sophistication of the formal lessons the author was able to draw from his radical artistic practice that connects writing education to theory and praxis by Walter Benjamin, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Andy Warhol, and others. ASAP offers congratulations to Kenneth Goldsmith, winner of our 2011 Book Prize!