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:
“I heard it enough to realize that even many serious readers—the kind of people who come to author readings on gorgeous summer evenings—just can’t name any Asian American women writers beyond the phenomenally well-known Amy Tan.” Celeste Ng, author of the novel Everything I Never Told You, has compiled a list of Asian American women fiction writers, a demographic often overlooked. (Salon)
Writing poetry has been shown to benefit Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. “Creativity taps into emotional memory and the language that’s tied to emotions,” states neurologist Daniel Potts. (U.S News)
“There’s a whole sense of what it means to be a Cuban in Miami and what it means to be a Cuban in Cuba. And now we can have a dialogue.” Listen to Cuban-American inaugural poet Richard Blanco reflect on the recent announcement of the normalization of Cuban-United States relations. (WBUR)
Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt is a big fan of Wallace Stevens’s poetry, as he reveals in the New York Times By the Book blog.
Many writers gave compelling TED presentations in 2014, and GalleyCat has provided footage from several author talks, including those given by Elizabeth Gilbert, Isabel Allende, and Joanne Harris.
At the Los Angeles Times, Carolyn Kellogg lists her New Year’s wishes for books and publishing, including a wish for “[f]ewer books like Fifty One Shades of Beige.”
“A partial view may be as meaningful as a whole one, and being alienated by a work of art, or feeling you don’t want to finish it, or look at it for a second more, is as valid as obsessive interest and passionate fandom.” Read Noah Berlatsky’s essay about the credibility of criticism debate at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
