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:
Author and neurologist Oliver Sacks died yesterday at the age of eighty-two after a battle with cancer. Sacks authored numerous books, including Awakenings (1973) and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985), about treating patients who suffered from various brain disorders; his books served as detailed meditations on consciousness and the intersections of science, art, and the human condition. At the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani writes: “It’s no coincidence that so many of the qualities that made Oliver Sacks such a brilliant writer are the same qualities that made him an ideal doctor: keen powers of observation and a devotion to detail, deep reservoirs of sympathy, and an intuitive understanding of the fathomless mysteries of the human brain and the intricate connections between the body and the mind.”
“Emerson didn’t want to write poems about the New World. He wanted poems to make the world new. It is fascinating, therefore, to see how he arranged for his own swift obsolescence.” The New Yorker’s Dan Chiasson examines how Ralph Waldo Emerson provided the framework for American poetry and how he influenced iconic American poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
Two rare handwritten letters by James Joyce recently sold at auction in the United States for $24,650.68. In the letters—one dated in 1918, the other in 1922—Joyce discusses his problems in finding a U.K. printer for his novel Ulysses. (Guardian)
Before her novel Into the Valley was picked up for publication by Soho Press, fiction writer Ruth Galm received nearly sixty agent rejections. At Publishers Weekly, Galm chronicles her long path to publication and offers advice about dealing with rejection.
In 1998, science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin published what became a classic craft manual for aspiring writers titled Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew. NPR’s Scott Simon interviews Le Guin about the recent release of the updated edition of the guide, Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story.
Approximately one thousand new words have been added to the Oxford Dictionaries website, including “manspreading,” “awesomesauce,” “hangry,” and “mic drop.” (GalleyCat)
Jose Gutierrez, a fifty-three-year-old garbage collector in Bogotá, Colombia, has been rescuing discarded books and providing them to children in impoverished areas for nearly twenty years. Known as Colombia’s “Lord of the Books,” Gutierrez says of his labor of love, “Books are our salvation and that is what Colombia needs.” (ABC News)
