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.
Common Goods Books, the independent bookstore founded in 2006 by author and radio personality Garrison Keillor, is set to start its new life as Next Chapter. Keillor has sold the St. Paul bookstore to local Nicholas Ballas, who says the fundamentals of the store will stay the same, including its book selections and staff. (Pioneer Press)
In Wales, a ring fitted with a lock of braided hair thought to belong to Charlotte Brontë has surfaced at the Antiques Roadshow. The ring, which also bears an inscription of the Jane Eyre author’s name, is valued at £20,000 (approximately $26,090). (Guardian)
“Poetry means a protest that no one can take away from me, a therapist no money could buy, a story no one else could tell.” For the teenage honorees of this year’s National Student Poets Program, poetry and activism are intertwined. (Vulture)
At Electric Literature, Jeanna Kadlec explains why it’s okay for a writer to turn thirty without publishing a book. “You can’t rush the production of life experience, or the time it takes to process and sift.”
Over at the Rumpus, columnist and debut author Margaret Renkl has similarly reassuring advice. “I think it might be helpful to some writers—maybe especially to people who come to writing later in life—to hear that it’s possible to write a memoir in very tiny pieces.” Renkl’s memoir, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions on June 9.
“I never set out to write something that would send a ‘big message’ and am pretty sure that if I ever did, the result would be tendentious and crappy. I do think that universality resides in the specific, that readers are able to identify with and enter into stories that are extremely specific—once there, readers form their own interpretations.” Susan Choi on bidding farewell to fairy tales in her new novel, Trust Exercise. (Literary Hub)
Poet Forrest Gander, whose collection Be With won a Pulitzer Prize on Monday, shares a spring reading list that includes recently released poetry collections Casting Deep Shade: An Amble by his late wife, C. D. Wright, and Sight Lines by Arthur Sze. (Vulture)
And at Guernica, nonfiction author David Shields talks about marriage, masculinity, and the need for brevity in writing his “indecorous” new book, The Trouble With Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power.
