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:
Today, poet Brenda Hillman and former United States Poet Laureate Robert Haas, together with authors Bill McKibben and Rick Bass, actress Daryl Hannah, and many others, are risking arrest in protest of the Keystone XL extension pipeline.
Bookstore sales dipped a bit in 2012, yet the .5 percent decline was the smallest in years. (Publishers Weekly)
Indian poet D. Vinayachandran received a state funeral with full honors yesterday in his home village of West Kallada. (New Indian Express)
Kera Bolonik reports that a letter written by T. S. Eliot in 1957 has been discovered at the University of London. (Salon)
“In 1917 Millay’s first book, Renascence and Other Poems, made her the muse and celebrity of Greenwich Village bohemia, and as fans of her poetry are well aware, she took so effortlessly to the neighborhood’s progressive sexual politics that she fast became its emissary.” In an essay for the Poetry Foundation, Kate Bolick looks at the life and work of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
David Ulin highlights a recent Alexander Stille essay, which “raised some interesting questions about the family memoir.” (Los Angeles Times)
The Ecstatic Music Festival is running through March 21 at New York City’s Merkin Concert Hall, which includes a new song cycle by composer Sarah Kirkland Snider based on a sequence of ten poems by Nathaniel Bellows. If you’re not nearby, you can listen on the Internet radio station Q2. (New York Times)
Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and Elizabeth Bastos has penned “Excerpts From Steamy Romance Novels for Parents of Young Children.” (McSweeney’s)
