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:
“Books are the way that the dead communicate with us.” Writer Neil Gaiman and illustrator Chris Riddell have published an illustrated essay on the importance of reading and art. (Guardian)
Folio Literary Management has acquired Harold Ober Associates, a literary agency that was founded in 1929 and has represented major writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and J. D. Salinger. (Publishers Weekly)
A new online archive at the British Library celebrates the Booker Prize’s fiftieth anniversary and reveals the contentious and sometimes arbitrary judging process: The 1976 winner, for example, was determined by a coin toss. (Guardian)
Eileen Myles talks about poetry, prophecy, politics, and her new poetry collection, Evolution. (Paris Review)
Words Without Borders has awarded the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature to Chad W. Post, the director of Open Letter Books and managing editor of Three Percent.
“It feels like my arms are being pulled in two different directions and like I’m walking in pitch darkness.” Jamel Brinkley describes writing short stories and his debut collection, A Lucky Man. (Rumpus)
Read an excerpt of Brinkley’s book in the latest Poets & Writers First Fiction feature.
Kate Atkinson, whose novel Transcription will be published later this month, shares her book preferences and tastes with the New York Times.
“Then I look at what literature has given me, it’s not a guide for life so much as it is a sensibility, and in many cases, not a good one.” Novelist Lydia Kiesling ponders motherhood and what literature can teach us. (Cut)
Vulture chats with Jonathan Lethem about his forthcoming book, The Feral Detective, “the first great novel about the Trump era, disguised as a rollicking detective story.”
