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:
Digital book retailer Kobo has partnered with Global Eagle Entertainment and Bauer Communications to make e-books available to passengers on Southwest Airlines flights. Kobo’s digital reading platform includes complimentary titles from major publishers Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and others. (Authorlink)
“When an artist has to assert that her intended audience is all humans rather than those who happen to be of her particular gender or race, what she’s actually having to assert is the breadth and depth of her own humanity.” At the New York Times Bookends blog, Cheryl Strayed and Pankaj Mishra discuss the double standards for judging domestic themes in fiction.
Earlier this month, the City University of Hong Kong announced the closure of its MFA program in creative writing. The low-residency program was established in 2010 by Hong Kong–based novelist Xu Xi, and attracted students from all over the world. Twenty-five prominent authors including Pulitzer Prize–winners Junot Díaz, Rae Armantrout, and Robert Olen Butler signed an open letter protesting the university’s decision to close the program: “In the future, we feel that the MFA program promises to make City U a widely recognized center of global literary and cultural dialogue, which will in turn contribute to Hong Kong’s growing importance as a international center of arts and culture.” (Hong Wrong)
Acclaimed author, literary critic, and teacher William Zinsser, who was best known for his 1976 book On Writing Well, passed away yesterday at age ninety-two. On Writing Well sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States. Zinsser wrote more than a dozen books in his lifetime. (Huffington Post)
“One of the current great problems in the world is fundamentalism of every kind— political, spiritual—and poetry is an antidote to fundamentalism. Poetry is about the clarities that you find when you don’t simplify. They’re about complexity, nuance, subtlety. Poems also create larger fields of possibilities.” At the Washington Post, poet Jane Hirshfield discusses her views on poetry’s transformative role in human lives.
Mark Dawson, a British self-published author who makes $450,000 per year from his John Milton novel series, talks to Forbes about his process and strategies for success within the uncertain world of self-publishing.
Photographer Robert Dawson has documented hundreds of libraries across the United States over the past eighteen years. The collected photographs as well as accompanying essays are compiled in his new book, The Public Library. Read two of the book’s essays about the role of public libraries over at Literary Hub.
