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.
The Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y has revealed the winners of this year’s Discovery Poetry Contest, which champions poets who have not yet published a full-length book. The four winners—Kenzie Allen, Ina Cariño, Mag Gabbert, and Alexandra Zukerman—will each give a reading at the 92Y and publish work on the Paris Review Daily. They also receive $500 and a stay at the Ace Hotel.
The Amazon Literary Partnership has awarded grants to eighty literary nonprofits, including Poets & Writers, allocating more than $1 million in funding. The Academy of American Poets and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) each received $140,000, which will in turn be distributed to even more organizations via the Academy’s Poetry Fund and CLMP’s Literary Magazine Fund. (Business Wire)
CLMP revealed this year’s Literary Magazine Fund grant recipients in a press release this morning.
While Philip Roth requested that many of his private papers be destroyed after Blake Bailey completed his authorized biography, a number of scholars are calling for the materials to be preserved. The decision is complicated, in part, by the fallout surrounding Bailey, who was accused of sexual assault by several women, which led to W. W. Norton removing Bailey’s biography of Roth from its catalogue—though it was later picked up by Skyhorse Publishing. (New York Times)
Vintage has acquired the rights to an unpublished story collection by Walter Tevis, the author of The Queen’s Gambit, which was recently adapted into a popular miniseries. The publisher has also acquired and plans to reprint the author’s remaining backlist of adult titles. Tevis died in 1984. (Publishers Weekly)
“I want to show young people like me that it is possible to live a life surrounded by art and have these really deep meaningful experiences with things that are visual and things that are auditory and literary.” Larissa Pham, the author of Pop Song, discusses writing with her younger self in mind. (BOMB)
“These days I think that I start with a problem. I start with something someone said to me and it’s bothering me, or I don’t fully understand it.” Poet and essayist Sabrina Orah Mark describes writing as “a kind of life raft.” (Creative Independent)
“In an effort to bring myself back to life at the keyboard, I decided to fill my brain to the limit. Not with news feeds buzzing in from around the world, but with my own imaginative flood.” Drawing inspiration from Marvel and the comic book world, Benjamin Percy has imagined his own literary speculative universe. (Literary Hub)
“I suppose I feel as though the form chose me. When I reflect on the path to writing this book in terms of craft, I’m struck by how often I felt driven by the book itself rather than vice versa.” Doireann Ní Ghríofa, the author of A Ghost in the Throat, discusses form, history, and writing “a female text.” (Paris Review Daily)
