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:
Yesterday the Before Columbus Foundation announced the winners of the 39th annual American Book Awards, given to provide “recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.” The winners include poets Tommy Pico and Joseph Rios, fiction writer Victor LaValle, and nonfiction writers Sunaura Taylor and Valeria Luiselli.
In other award news, the finalists for the 2018 Dayton Literary Peace Prizes have been announced. Mohsin Hamid and Jenny Erpenbeck are among the fiction finalists; Michelle Kuo and Ta-Nehisi Coates are among the nonfiction finalists.
Writer Sloane Crosley describes her “sentimental library,” a collection “characterized by memory and association,” and how she stores her books with no shelves in her New York City apartment. (New York Times)
A Microsoft chatbot in China can hold conversations with people and write poems based on images. The chatbot has already written more than twelve million poems. (Quartz)
Cheryl Young, the executive director of the MacDowell Colony, has announced that she will retire in early 2019 after her successor is appointed. Young has worked for the organization since 1988. (ARTNews)
Remezcla offers a list of books in the Latinx literary canon to stand alongside the Western canon.
“…I’m afraid that society issues permissions to people to be a poet. What you worry about is that someone of great value, a woman, a person of color, or someone disabled might think ‘I couldn’t do that or I don’t feel I have the permission to do that’. What you really want to do is to begin to try and change those permissions.” Eavan Boland on how poetry is changing. (Irish Examiner)
Author Kevin Kwan talks about what he’s reading, his love of magazines, and the adaptation of his bestselling book Crazy Rich Asians as a movie, which comes out tomorrow. (W Magazine)
