Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from The Jungle Law by Victoria Vinton and Mother’s Milk by Edward St. Aubyn.
Article Archive: News and Trends
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
Amazon Starts Publishing Program
In August, Amazon.com launched a program that offers customers short stories and essays in a digital format for forty-nine cents each.
The Written Image: Chip Kidd
Images from a new collection of graphic art by Chip Kidd, an associate art director at Knopf, who has designed nearly eight hundred book jackets for the publishing house during the last twenty years.
Q&A: The Real Life of Philip Gourevitch
From the Paris Review’s new offices in lower Manhattan, Philip Gourevitch spoke about the past and future of what Time called “the biggest ‘little magazine’ in history.”
The Contester: One Editor's Take on Clean Competition
Much has been written about some judges rewarding friends and former students, and I worry that a few questionable practices have detracted from the hundreds of contests that bring recognition to so many well-deserving writers. Nevertheless, there are steps that all of us—editors, judges, and writers—can take to help keep contests clean.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Water’s Leaves and Other Poems by Geoffrey Nutter and Pieces of Air in the Epic by Brenda Hillman.
Echoes of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl"
Fifty years later, a number of organizations are planning special events on October 7 to commemorate the anniversary of Ginsberg's legendary reading.
Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Verb, the Relay Project, From the Fishouse, Sonora Review, Bridge, Columbia, Failbetter, and Versal.
The Status of a Classic
This month the Library of America, the nonprofit publisher founded in 1979 to “preserve our nation’s literary heritage,” will release the first two installments of a planned eight-volume edition of Philip Roth’s collected fiction.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Borealis Books, Passager Books, and Gorsky Press.
Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Poetry, the Southern Review, Swivel: The Nexus of Women and Wit, 6x6, Ninth Letter, and Black Clock.
No Translation Takers
Despite a $10,000 incentive from the Association of American Publishers to United States publishers willing to translate, publish, and promote contemporary Iranian fiction, no commercial houses have come forward since the initiative was announced in late 2004.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Evening Ferry by Katherine Towler and Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio.
Amazon Expands Search Function
In case anyone was wondering, the four most frequently used words in T.S. Eliot’s 1943 collection Four Quartets are “time,” “past,” “fire,” and “end.” It is this kind of information that can be found by using one of several new features recently added to Amazon.com’s “Search Inside the Book” function, launched in October 2003.
Q&A: C. Michael Curtis's Fiction Issues
C. Michael Curtis, a senior editor at the Atlantic Monthly, who is known not only for selecting award-winning short stories but also for his considerate and sensible letters of rejection to the thousands of submissions he’s read over the years, spoke about the magazine’s new approach to publishing fiction.
The Contester: Who's Doing What to Keep Them Clean
Unfortunately, these days it is not the quality of the award-winning writing that gets people talking; it is the way in which contests are run and the manner in which winners are chosen—or not chosen, as the case may be—that attract attention.
Resuscitating Poetry Recitation
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation recently completed the pilot phase of a new program designed to raise the profile of poetry in high schools.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features McSweeney’s Books, Believer Books, Tell Tale Press, and Wings Press.
Filling the Best Seats in the House
Thanks to a growing trend in grassroots marketing and publicity, writers in the San Francisco Bay area are reading to packed houses—literally.
The End of the Story
To those who knew him through his work—and, if we are to believe the many tributes published in the past two months, to those who knew him intimately as well—Thompson was a strange and lovely amalgamation.
Poets House and PSA Branch Out
Aided by a $260,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Poets House and the Poetry Society of America, two nonprofit literary organizations based in New York City, recently partnered to establish Branching Out: Poetry in the Twentieth Century.
Literary MagNet
Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features the Grove Review, the Sonora Review, Volt, Quick Fiction, and Barrelhouse.
Imported Imprint to Close Its Doors
HarperCollins recently announced that it will close its United States imprint Fourth Estate.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features City Lights Books, Verse Press, Wave Books, the Feminist Press, Ig Publishing, and Sarabande Books.
Searching for Signs of Shakespeare
Most writers have heard the old saying about the Bard and the chimps: Gather 100 monkeys (or similarly hirsute primates) in a room, give them typewriters, and sooner or (more likely) later, they’ll deliver the complete works of Shakespeare. Nick Hoggard, a British computer programmer living in Sweden, has decided to put the theory—often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century disciple of Charles Darwin—to the test.