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:
“I still like language a little too much to call myself Beckettian. He is very austere, and I like fooling around with words. I guess I’m more Joycean, although that’ll sound really pretentious.” Actor David Duchovny, once an aspiring poet, speaks with the New York Times about his new novel, Holy Cow, and with NPR about his “big break” into acting and writing his novel twenty years later.
Poet Stephen Stephanchev, the first poet laureate of Queens, New York, celebrated his one hundredth birthday on Friday. Queens president Melinda Katz has officially declared January 30 “Stephen Stepanchev Day.” Stephanchev has published a dozen poetry collections, and taught English and poetry at Queens College for thirty-five years. (New York Observer)
“There was no magic, and there had been few flashes of inspiration—just tens of thousands of hours of work.” Kevin Ashton’s new book, How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery, hopes to dispel common myths about the “magic” of creativity. (Salon)
San Francisco’s literary community is thriving, and the number of bookstores in the Bay Area now rivals the number in New York City. (SF Gate)
Sixty-five years overdue: Sir Jay Tidmarsh of the United Kingdom checked out a book from the Taunton School library in 1949, found it recently, and decided to return it with a payment of £1,500 in overdue fees. (Guardian)
The recent rise in demand for “daring, long-form television” has opened up more opportunities for novelists to sell their original projects to television executives. (Publishers Weekly)
On Saturday, the British government lifted its ban on sending books to prison inmates, but has restricted the booksellers to Waterstones, Blackwell’s Foyles, and WH Smith, in order to “ensure the protection and safety of prisons.” (Bookseller)
