Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories.
Multiple bookstores in the state of North Rhine–Westphalia in Germany were severely damaged during the recent flood disaster, which claimed the lives of over two hundred people in Germany and Belgium, with many others still missing. (Shelf Awareness/CNN)
“Most Native people are so accustomed to looking at themselves from the outside, from the colonizer’s gaze, that they don’t necessarily realize they’re doing it. That’s how pernicious the process of colonization really is.” For Guernica’s Back Draft series, Sterling HolyWhiteMountain discusses a revised section of his short story “Featherweight” and reflects on learning to write from inside his community.
“Then I started a Twitter account for Darryl (later deleted), but on there, I would do these little monologues as Darryl, and I think you see that the chapters are a little bit like Twitter threads.” Jackie Ess explains how she developed the titular character of her debut novel, Darryl. (Creative Independent)
“It felt as if, after thirty years of writing, I had finally been able to use my entire vocabulary, both humor and seriousness, and really depict the hills as they are.” Chris Offutt discusses bringing Appalachia to life in his latest novel, The Killing Hills. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
“My vision, for a long time, had simply been to survive my traumas while causing as little damage to other people as possible—and to avoid publishing anything that didn’t tell ‘the whole truth.’” Andrea Actis describes striving to tell “the whole truth” about her father and his death in her first book, Grey All Over. (Rumpus)
“At this moment, as the coronavirus death toll in the U.S. is near 600,000, what would a syllabus for modern grieving look like?” Beth Kissileff recommends books that offer insight on grief. (Literary Hub)
“When you are in the grip of something, it’s harder not to do it than to do it.” Jean Hanff Korelitz recalls the all-consuming drafting process behind her latest novel, The Plot. (Guardian)
Tina Jordan of the New York Times Book Review shares a selection of science fiction ads that appeared in the section during the 1940s and 1950s.
