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:
It’s a battle between paranormal romance and urban fantasy…or, at least, a copyright battle between two of the genres’ top authors. Sherrilyn Kenyon, author of the best-selling Dark-Hunter series of paranormal romance, has sued Cassandra Clare, author of The Mortal Instruments young adult urban fantasy series, for copyright infringement, detailing a list of similarities between the series. For example, Kenyon complains of motifs used in Clare’s series, “including without limitation a cup, a sword, and a mirror, each imbued with magical properties to help battle evil and protect mankind.” Some note, however, that these motifs are tropes of the genre, and plagiarism is difficult to prove when it comes to common themes. (Slate)
What will become of the literary legacy of Karl Ove Knausgaard, an “of the moment” author who divides critics and audiences? (Chronicle Review)
During the thirty days leading up to the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Awards announcements on March 17, the NBCC blog features board members highlighting the thirty finalists. Board member David Biespiel shares his appreciation of poetry finalist Frank Stanford’s What About This (Copper Canyon Press).
The Wall Street Journal lists five contenders for the year’s breakout novel, akin to Paula Hakwins’s The Girl on the Train or Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. “Worth up to seven figures for publishers, these novels capture international imagination, are ripe for film and television adaptation, and appeal to the genre’s biggest fan base: female readers.”
“There will always be people ready to be offended. But there will also always be people who read good sex writing and think yes, and feel grateful to have had this strange, powerful part of human experience put down on the page—which is, after all, the perfect forum for full disclosure; although a book may be printed in its millions, we are alone when we read.” At the Times Literary Supplement, fiction writer and editor Claire Lowdon considers what distinguishes good sex writing from erotica and pornography.
An author and leadership coach has developed a strategy to read more nonfiction books in a fraction of the time. The strategy, however, doesn’t help you read more pages, but instead increases comprehension by actively reading fewer pages. (Quartz)
Darryl Pinckney—whose second novel, Black Deutschland, is out now from Farrar, Straus & Giroux—discusses his fondness for Othello; what moves him most in literary works; and the genres he loves and avoids: “I am probably too fond of literary diaries and letters, and take much pleasure in literary essays. I am open to fiction from anywhere. I love poetry. I avoid cookbooks.” (New York Times)
