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.
Barnes & Noble has announced the finalists for its 2018 Discover Awards, which will confer more than $100,000 in prizes for books published last year. The nominees in fiction are Paul Howarth for Only Killers and Thieves, Fatima Farheen Mirza for A Place for Us, and Tommy Orange for There There.
“Poets have different stories and different relationships to capital, production, and consumption. I just so happen to have been raised by a monomaniacal and failed chaser of the American Dream.” Carmen Giménez Smith discusses the sense of urgency behind the poems in her most recent collection, Cruel Futures, and her forthcoming Be Recorder. (Letras Latinas)
Listen to Giménez Smith read from Cruel Futures in Episode 19 of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast.
“These are poems that acknowledge the history and the pain of that, but attempt to make a case for the fact that we can still be empowered to survive and tell our stories and be fully seen as worthy human beings.” Sally Wen Mao talks to the Rumpus about her new collection, Oculus, and finding the hope to question a legacy of discrimination.
“This book is so good that it doesn’t have to be a book!” In the age of Netflix adaptations, Juliet Lapidos wonders why we write novels at all. (New Yorker)
A group of leading writers and historians have published a manifesto warning against the rising tide of populism in Europe. “Without the idea of Europe, freedom, women’s rights, democracy, egalitarianism is hard to defend in my part of the world,” said novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, who joined Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and Svetlana Alexievitch in signing the manifesto. (Guardian)
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has restructured its trade publishing division, with changes including the departure of Marie Gorman, senior vice president of trade sales, and the promotion of Ed Spade to vice president of national accounts, trade sales, and strategy. (Publishers Weekly)
“I think artists have a tendency to be these sort of oracles, and we’re channeling because we’re paying attention.” Maurice Carlos Ruffin on the real-life dystopia behind his debut novel, We Cast a Shadow. (Los Angeles Times)
