Some things that caught our attention this week.

• Want to write while shopping, or riding a roller coaster? The Mall of America wants you. “The Writer-in-Residence Contest will give a special scribe the chance to spend five days deeply immersed in the Mall atmosphere while writing on-the-fly impressions in their own words. The contest winner will stay in an attached hotel for four nights, receive a $400 gift card to buy food and drinks and collect a generous honorarium for the sweat and tears they’ll put into their prose.” Applications are due by March 10.

   

• Walt Whitman, Novelist. The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, a novel by Walt Whitman, has been discovered in the archives of the Victorian-era New York paper, the Sunday Dispatch. The book was discovered by Zachary Turpin of the University of Houston, and he describes it as “fun, rollicking, creative, twisty, bizarre little book.” You can read it for free online.

   

• The Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalists were announced. The winners will be announced on April 21, the evening before the Los Angeles Festival of Books. You can read the list of all fifty-five nominees in eleven categories over at the Los Angeles Times site. Thomas McGuane will receive the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.