Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories.
Creative Capital has announced the recipients of its annual Creative Capital Awards. Thirty-five projects, representing the work of forty-two artists, will each receive $50,000 in funding; all artists will also be provided with career development services. Among this year’s recipients are writers Anne Finger, Mitchell S. Jackson, Meng Jin, Sabrina Orah Mark, Marc Anthony Richardson, Legacy Russell, and Simone White.
Poet Louise Glück, who received this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, has delivered her Nobel Lecture.
Meanwhile, the Spanish-language rights to Glück’s work has become the subject of controversy. Pre-Textos, which had published the poet’s work for more than a decade, has criticized Glück’s agent, Andrew Wylie, for his decision to move Glück’s work to a different Spanish-language publisher, Visor, shortly after she won the Nobel. In response, Wylie noted Pre-Textos had allowed their rights to expire in 2015, and mentioned editorial concerns about the publisher. (New York Times)
Voting for the Goodreads Choice Awards has closed and the winning books in all twenty categories have been unveiled. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig won for fiction, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi won for nonfiction, and Dearly by Margaret Atwood won for poetry. In total, Goodreads users cast 5,674,480 votes during this year’s competition. (NBC News)
“As the big houses have become bigger and bigger, their business has become more about making money than art or protest.” Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson calls on the Department of Justice to stop the pending merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. (Atlantic)
The 2020 PEN America Virtual Gala took place yesterday evening. During the evening’s festivities, PEN America honored Patti Smith with the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award and Barack Obama with the Voice of Influence Award.
Since its launch in the United Kingdom in early November, Bookshop has raised more than £500,000 for local independent bookstores. But while many cheer Bookshop’s early success, the Bookseller reports that some booksellers remain skeptical.
Meanwhile, an eighty-one-year-old man named William Shakespeare was the second person in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine outside of clinical trials. (BBC)
