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.
“I feel that perhaps this project is something close to a century-long prayer.” In a spruce forest in Norway, novelist Han Kang bid farewell to her latest manuscript. As part of artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library project, Han’s unseen novel will be locked in the Deichman Library in Oslo until 2114, when the spruce trees Paterson planted one hundred years earlier will be used for paper to print Han’s book. (Guardian)
At the Millions, poet Toi Derricotte talks about her new collection, “I”: New and Selected Poems, and the spirituality that fueled her work as the cofounder of Cave Canem. “We had a closing circle at our first retreat and I remember this huge gold moon shining over us. I really felt it was the universe saying, ‘This is your time.’”
In Siege: Trump Under Fire, the forthcoming sequel to his best-selling Fire and Fury, author Michael Wolff claims that special counsel Robert Mueller drew up a three-count obstruction of justice indictment against Donald Trump. A spokesperson for Mueller has denied the claim. (Guardian)
At the Rumpus, Natalie Scenters-Zapico talks about multilingual reading and writing about the border as a complicated place in her second poetry collection, Lima :: Limón. “The border becomes a test-tube for modernity and what happens there: surveillance, policing, documentation, violence...”
Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Tony Horwitz has died at age sixty. Horwitz was known for the immersive research he put into his best-selling nonfiction books, including Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War. (New York Times)
“Let us then seize the present moment, and establish a national language, as well as a national government.” In 1789, before compiling the new nation’s first dictionary, Noah Webster called for linguistic independence in the United States. (Atlantic)
And Domenica Ruta shares the experience of writing her new novel, Last Day, out yesterday from Spiegel & Grau. “The most challenging thing for me as an author of this and probably any book I write is the way publishing is a performative act of maturation. Writers grow up in public.” (Poets & Writers)
