Writers' heroines

The Guardian interviews the finalists of the Man Booker International prize 2015 and Fanny Howe lists the Brontës among her 'literary heroes'.

Who are your literary heroes? My immediate list would include James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Julio Cortázar, Garcia Márquez, Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett and before them, the Brontë sisters, Rilke, and Thomas Hardy. The delicious chaos in the middle would be James Joyce. In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator’s voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original.

Historical romance writer Lisa Kleypas sounds like a Brontëite too in this interview by Jezebel.

Who are your influences? I’ve read you talk a lot about Judith McNaught and Kathleen Woodiwiss, for instance. Who really shaped you in the beginning? I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious, but I read Wuthering Heights and it was a bolt of lightning. It was back in high school and it was compulsory reading—because who would read that when you’re that age if someone didn’t make you?—and the driven, tormented, powerful character of Heathcliff was just mesmerizing. That book was hugely influential to me, even though it didn’t have a happy ending and he’s really a pretty terrible character. The notion of this man who needed to be tamed and understood and all of that, that was powerfully attractive. (Kelly Faircloth)

Miami Herald reviews Patricia Park's Re Jane.

In her delightful debut novel, Patricia Park uses the classic novel "Jane Eyre" as a template to examine very modern concepts: questions of identity and love, culture and conscience, even the hardships of immigration. But you don't really need familiarity with Charlotte Brontë's most famous work to appreciate "Re Jane"; it's entertaining all on its own, vibrant and witty and a hell of a lot of fun. (Connie Ogle)

Metaglossia: The Translation World reviews the novel.

A couple of websites discussing the new trailer for the film Crimson Peak mention the Brontës along the way. According to Slash Film,

 It kind of looks like Jane Eyre if Charlotte Brontë had decided to unleash actual ghosts instead of just a crazy first wife. (Angie Han)

And Refinery 29 thinks that,

 this movie looks like the truly terrifying intersection of Jane Eyre and The Ring. (Elizabeth Kiefer)

Good Times reviews the film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd and considers Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy’s 1874 literary classic “Far From the Madding Crowd” the grandfather (at least one of them) of the modern romance novel. (Along with just about anything written by the Brontë sisters.) (Lisa Jensen)

ABC (Spain) features Francisco de Goya's goddaughter and disciple Rosario Weiss and finds her

Una especie de Emily Brontë a la española. (Natividad Pulido) (Translation)

Yesterday was Daphne Du Maurier's birthday. Flavorwire wrote about her and her legacy.

Daphne du Maurier, born on this day in 1907, is a difficult author to categorize. While British literature was heading into the realm of complex modernism, her gothic mysteries and twisted love stories were a deliberate throwback to the motifs and concerns of writers like Anne Radcliffe and the Brontës, particularly Jane Eyre. Yet her storytelling was so eerie and compelling, so full of twists on the uncanny, that she inspired a few of Alfred Hitchcock’s most memorable screen efforts.
Rebecca, her most enduring work, which still regularly sells thousands of copies a month, is an obvious play on the themes of Jane Eyre — with a controlling husband, a first wife who haunts the second, and a great house with a great secret, a house that ends up collapsing in flames. (Sarah Seltzer)

El siglo del torreón (Mexico) celebrated too, and added a few blunders for good measure.

The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses pseudonyms.

The Brontë Parsonage Museum Facebook page reports that tickets for their evening with Simon Armitage on June 6 are now widely available (and not just for members of the Brontë Society).