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:
Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel, A Wrinkle in Time, is being made into a movie directed by Ava DuVernay and starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, and newcomer Storm Reid. TIME covers the making of the film.
In a year where “reading felt louder than it used to,” the art director of the New York Times Book Review picks his favorite book covers of the year.
After her story “Cat Person” went viral last week, Kristen Roupenian has sold her debut story collection, You Know You Want This, to the U.K. publisher Jonathan Cape. Eleven publishers are currently bidding for the U.S. rights to the book in an auction topping $1 million. (Guardian)
Author Bette Howland has died at the age of eighty. Howland wrote three well-received books in the 1970s and early 1980s, and was a friend and lover of Saul Bellow’s. Her work was recently discovered by A Public Space editor Brigid Hughes, who will publish a selection of Howland’s work as the first title of their new imprint, APS Books. (New York Times)
Speaking of Hughes, A. N. Devers considers how Hughes, the second editor of the Paris Review, was erased from her job. (Longreads)
Jeanette Winterson and Margaret Atwood, among other women writers, share the books that made them feminists. (Guardian)
“We have wanted to share their stories but, maddeningly, the onus in reporting these situations usually falls on the victims. Too often, these stories cannot move forward unless the victims involved take huge risks—professional and personal—to go on the record.” The editors of Publishers Weekly have penned a letter on the difficulties of reporting on sexual abuse in the book industry.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Just Kids, and On the Road: Indie bookstores reveal their most frequently stolen books. (Electric Literature)
