Bad Reviews: Spanish writer Camilo Jose Cela,...

Bad Reviews: Spanish writer Camilo Jose Cela, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature, didn’t impress a group of Miami students. “He was quite rude,” said Karla Agurcia, 15, of Carver Middle School, where Cela, 73, spoke. “We asked him to sign a paper and he said, ‘No, I only sign books.’ ” Cela has a reputation for eccentricity and little concern for what people think of him. “I think he said what first came to his mind. . . . I don’t think he was organized; he didn’t have any notes,” said Christine Turner, 11.

Liberty, please: A Chinese magazine that published dissidents’ works before it was banned and a jailed Malawian poet have won PEN American Center’s 1990 “freedom to write awards,” $3,000 prizes that are part of the writers’ group’s worldwide campaign for free expression. Novelist Larry McMurtry, American PEN’s president, will present the prizes Wednesday, in absentia, to poet Jack Mapanje, formerly a teacher at the University of Malawi, and Today magazine, founded in 1978, primarily by poet Zhao Zhenkai, better known by his pen-name, Bei Dao. Mapanje, 46, has been held without charges in Malawi since his arrest Sept. 25, 1987, PEN American Center said. Chinese authorities shut down Today in 1980.

Book Designs: The late designer Halston will be the subject of a biography, “Simply Halston,” due out next fall from G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Author Steven Gaines said Halston’s death from AIDS last week was “a great loss to both the design industry and to all the people who cared about him.” Gaines’ previous work includes books on the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Alice Cooper and evangelist Marjoe Gortner.

Communing: Homeless advocate Mitch Snyder of Washington, D.C., is planning a different kind of sabbatical. “It’s not really time away from the madness,” Snyder said of his plan to spend a month in a Trappist monastery in Virginia. “It’s more a matter of time spent just with God. Over the past month, I’ve been increasingly feeling that need.” Snyder, 46, whose battles for the homeless were portrayed in a TV movie, denied his decision was influenced by recent setbacks for his movement.