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:
“You ask anybody from El Salvador and they will tell you that they are more scared now than they were during the war. And that is not a good place to return to.” Poet Javier Zamora, who immigrated to the United States from El Salvador, speaks out against the Trump administration’s decision to revoke the temporary protection status of nearly 200,000 Salvadorans. (PBS NewsHour)
Independent Toronto press Coach House Books has suspended its poetry program for the immediate future. “Poetry is changing, and the way people read is changing,” said Alana Wilcox, the editorial director of Coach House Books. “We live in a Twitter world now—what does that mean for poetry?” (Toronto Star)
Peter Mayle, author of the travel memoir A Year in Provence, has died at age seventy-eight. (Guardian)
The New York Times investigates why Michelle Alexander’s book about mass incarceration, The New Jim Crow, has been banned in Florida and North Carolina prisons.
Reese Witherspoon is producing a comedy series starring Kristen Wiig based on Curtis Sittenfeld’s forthcoming story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Apple will produce the series as its first original scripted comedy. (Hollywood Reporter)
HarperAudio will release a series of spoken-word audiobook titles on vinyl this year, including editions of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning and Nikki Giovanni’s Love Poems. (Publishers Weekly)
Two men stole a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone worth £40,000 from a shop in Thetford, Norfolk. The thieves also made off with first editions of The Hobbit, Winnie the Pooh, and The Colour of Magic. (BBC News)
“I think every time we get a little louder, we get closer to the changes that actually need to be made.” Moira Donegan, the woman who started the spreadsheet in which women could anonymously share stories about sexual harassment in the media world, speaks in a video interview with the New York Times.
