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:
The names of more than a thousand previously anonymous contributors to Charles Dickens’s weekly literary journal, All the Year Round, have been revealed. Rare book dealer James Parrott acquired the Victorian novelist’s personal collection of the periodicals, and discovered that annotations written by Dickens divulge literary and journalistic contributions from famous authors including Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, and Lewis Carroll. (Guardian)
Today’s publication of Harper Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, is one of the most anticipated releases in recent literary history. Jane Ciabattari rounds up initial reviews of the work and examines how its publication will affect the literary legacy of the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. (Literary Hub)
“A short story is like a T-shirt. A novel is a suit and tie, sometimes overcoat and hat—it simply has more amplitude and ambition, larger, with more implication.” Bomb has published the final interview with author James Salter. The acclaimed writer passed away last month at age ninety.
At the Rumpus, Lidia Yuknavitch discusses the lines between fiction and nonfiction, the identity of being an artist, and her new novel, The Small Backs of Children. “I think we understand our own life experiences in narrative terms. If you consider that idea for a moment, we are walking novels. No one has a pure identity. Everyone has an identity made from everyone they’ve ever known…and from every experience they could process…arranged in memories, otherwise known as stories.”
What’s it like to write someone else’s memoir? Author William Novak discusses his experience and the challenges he faces as a ghostwriter for private clients. (New York Times)
“Tate may be the only poet whose main subject is the benefit of misunderstanding.” At NPR, Craig Morgan Teicher looks at the work of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet James Tate, who died last week at age seventy-one.
Following the European Union’s investigation into Amazon’s e-book contracts last month, several American booksellers and authors groups have demanded the United States Justice Department follow suit. The Authors Guild, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of Authors’ Representatives, and Authors United accused the e-tailer of antitrust violations and sent letters to the U.S. government arguing that Amazon’s dominance in the publishing market harms American consumers and the book industry as a whole. (Melville House)
