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:
On January 5, Europa Editions will publish a collection of interviews and letters from best-selling novelist Elena Ferrante titled Fragments: On Writing, Reading, and Absence. An excerpt from the forthcoming book—in which Ferrante discusses her writing process and her decision to remain anonymous—is up at Guernica.
At the Boston Review, poet Dan Beachy-Quick offers a reading of Moby-Dick as a “primer to creative crisis.” “To read Moby-Dick by its own light—and we must keep in mind that it is a novel about pursuing illumination—is to find ourselves obsessed with the nature of obsession.”
In response to last month’s Best American Poetry controversy and conversations surrounding inclusiveness and cultural appropriation in the poetry community, indie publisher BlazeVox Books announced it will publish a new anthology titled Bettering American Poetry, which will “intentionally shift favor so that the literary landscape within this anthology reflects a ranging plurality of voices in American poetry and illuminates the possibilities of sharing space.” Nominations for the anthology are open until November 30.
Nigerian novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani reports for the New Yorker on the state of Nigeria’s literary culture and the struggles and successes of various booksellers in the country.
Submit your work while supporting a good cause. Throughout the month of October, 100 percent of Sundog Lit’s submission fees will be donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
In a new memoir, Hemingway in Love: His Own Story, A. E. Hotchner, one of Ernest Hemingway’s closest friends, reveals how the author’s love affairs changed his life and influenced his art. (Smithsonian)
To celebrate the recent release of Margaret Atwood’s fifth novel, The Heart Goes Last, Flavorwire takes a chronological look back at all of Atwood’s speculative novels, beginning with her 1985 work The Handmaid’s Tale.
