Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:
“In a sense, his entire career has been an attempt to recover a lost—indeed, an actively suppressed—gay cultural heritage.” The New York Times profiles English novelist Alan Hollinghurst, whose novel The Sparsholt Affair came out yesterday in the United States.
From Don DeLillo’s Bronx accent to the “sparkling helium cannonade” of Harold Bloom’s laugh, Matt Levin describes listening to recordings of the Paris Review’s “Writers at Work” interviews. (Paris Review)
Australian author Markus Zusak announced he will publish a new novel in October with Random House. Zusak, who is the author of the best-selling 2005 young adult novel The Book Thief, has been working on the new novel, Bridge of Clay, for more than ten years. (Entertainment Weekly)
“I don’t like telling people what they have to do. I think people should do what they want to do, especially in the realm of creative work. I think you can’t really legislate the imagination….” Claudia Rankine talks with the White Review about artistic freedom, MFA culture, and not conforming to “somebody’s idea about what the market needs.”
St. Martin’s Press has acquired the North American rights to Pope Francis’s book A Future of Faith: The Path of Change in Politics and Society. The book will be released in August. (Publishers Weekly)
The New York Review of Books considers the war poetry of Walt Whitman, who served as a volunteer nurse during the war and saw an estimated 80,000 to 100,0000 wounded or sick soldiers.
Ann Mah travels through Florence visiting the haunts of poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who lived in the Italian city for fifteen years after they married and ran away from England. (New York Times)
Actress Viola Davis will publish a sequel to Don Freeman’s classic picture book Corduroy with Viking Children’s Books in September. Davis was drawn to the story as one of the few picture books at the time with an African American character. (People)
