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:
Digital media company BuzzFeed has launched a fellowship program for emerging nonfiction writers. Fellows will receive twelve thousand dollars each, and will spend four months working with BuzzFeed News senior editorial staff in New York City. At Electric Literature, BuzzFeed literary editor Saeed Jones discusses the company’s new venture.
Minneapolis-based publishing house Coffee House Press has received a $100,000 grant from the Bush Foundation. The small press will use the money to expand its In the Stacks program, which offers writers monthlong residencies in libraries throughout the Twin Cities. (Publishers Weekly)
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has released a critical report on the Library of Congress. The report reveals that mismanagement under Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. (Washington Post)
At the Guardian’s book blog, Scottish crime writer Val McDermid argues that crime fiction is politically liberal while thrillers are conservative. Journalist Jonathan Freedland offers a rebuttal.
To concurrently celebrate National Poetry Month and replace sidewalks damaged from this past winter, city officials of Cambridge, Massachusetts, have announced a new Sidewalk Poetry program, through which residents may submit original poems to be imprinted on sidewalks. An anonymous judging panel will select five winners who will be announced at the end of this month. (Melville House)
“To ‘make it new,’ might just mean a Chinese American woman poet writing some badass polyvocal poems to take on the Modernists.” At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Irene Hsiao interviews poet Marilyn Chin.
The new issue of Words Without Borders is dedicated to writing from the Tamil diaspora. “Detached from any one land, the modern Tamil identity is very often a hyphenated one, and one that is linked to a fiction that has travelled or is travelling,” writes author Lakshmi Holmström. “Words without borders, indeed.”
