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.
The Testaments, the sequel to Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, will launch in London on September 9 at midnight, followed by a live interview with the author, broadcast worldwide. The highly anticipated book is set fifteen years after The Handmaid’s Tale and returns readers to Gilead, a theocratic dictatorship where women have almost no rights. (Guardian)
Lambda Literary has named the finalists for its annual awards, which honor books published in the previous year by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writers. The winners in the twenty-four categories will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on June 3. Finalists include Fatimah Asghar for If They Come for Us, Eileen Myles for Evolution, Justin Phillip Reed for Indecency, and Ely Shipley for Some Animal. (Poets & Writers)
“The idea of writing without a bias is fake and doesn’t exist. All of my identities (queer, brown, Pakistani, Muslim) are every layer of my being.” Fatimah Asghar talks to Bustle about the poetry of solidarity.
“It is sad and exhilarating to realize that, with these poems, Tate has completely mastered yet another form he invented.” Matthew Zapruder suggests that James Tate’s posthumous collection, The Government Lake, forthcoming from Ecco in July, might be the best introduction to the late poet’s work. (Paris Review)
In celebration of International Women’s Day, BuzzFeed presents five books by women that explain what the world is really like, including Leta Hong Fincher’s Betraying Big Brother and Manal al-Sharif’s Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening.
Verily magazine surveys a history of #MeToo moments in literature, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
Meanwhile, Morrison’s new nonfiction collection, The Source of Self-Regard, just out from Knopf, examines the challenge of distinguishing information with wisdom in the digital age. (Brain Pickings)
Legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins has died. He was eighty-nine. (Boston Globe)
