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:
A casket believed to contain the remains of Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, has been discovered in Spain. Cervantes was buried in 1616, and the exact whereabouts of his grave have since been unknown. (CBS News)
“Having known him for forty-six years, I’ve come to realize since he passed away what a huge presence he was in my life and still continues to be.” At the New York Review of Books blog, poet Charles Simic writes about his memories of the late poet Mark Strand.
“Great poetry makes us understand the only half-understood; in that understanding comes relief, and it can feel very physical. This is art acting as a medicine.” Scholar and educator Belinda Jack discusses how the study of poetry can enrich the study of the medical sciences. (Times Higher Education)
Good news for free speech: PEN International has announced that six Eritrean writers have been released from prison after nearly six years of arbitrary detention.
The Jewish Book Council has announced the five finalists for this year’s Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. The finalists for the $100,000 prize are fiction writers Molly Antopol, Boris Fishman, Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Ayelet Tsabari, and Kenneth Bonert. (GalleyCat)
Today marks the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Yesterday, Scottish Labor MP Thomas Docherty called for a national debate on whether to prohibit the sale of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in the United Kingdom. (Guardian)
Current development proposals for libraries in Brooklyn, New York, include updating buildings in the Sunset Park and Brooklyn Heights neighborhoods and adding subsidized housing units on top of the library fronts. (New York Times)
Speaking of libraries, the library and information science industry is evolving, and Electric Literature has provided an informative infographic about the industry outlook.
