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.
Andy Ward has been promoted to publisher at Random House. He will carry on the work of his predecessor, Susan Kamil, who died in September. Knopf’s Robin Desser will join Random House as senior vice president and editor in chief. (Publishers Weekly)
Nina MacLaughlin revisits Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Homer’s Odyssey, among other works, to complicate prevailing assumptions about sirens. She reorients the reader from the sea to the jagged cliffs: “It is important to note, too, that what looked like an edge to the men was the center for the Sirens.” (Paris Review Daily)
At the Rumpus, Emilie Moorhouse shares how she came across the poems of surrealist writer Joyce Mansour around the time #MeToo first went viral. Translating Mansour felt newly vital, Moorhouse writes: “Her favorite subject matter happened to be two of society’s greatest fears: death and unfettered female desire.”
The Brontë Society in Haworth, England, has purchased a tiny Charlotte Brontë manuscript, handwritten by the author at age fourteen, for $777,000. The acquisition was aided in part by crowdfunding efforts that drew public support from several celebrated artists. (New York Times)
“The aim of the book wasn’t to reverse the gaze, and switch the good guys and the bad ones—it was to multiply the gaze, or the voices, specifically, granted the space to tell their tales.” Karthika Naïr talks reimagining the ancient story of the Mahabharata in her own poetry. (BOMB)
Kevin Wilson talks to the Millions about his latest novel, Nothing to See Here, and the origins of his obsession with the idea of bursting into flames.
Ahead of tomorrow’s National Book Awards ceremony, Vox has read and reviewed the finalists in all five categories.
Slate selects the fifty best nonfiction titles of the last twenty-five years, featuring memoirs, essay collections, reportage, and more.
