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:
Meredith Wild, a successful self-published romance novelist, is now finding success in the role of a publisher operating her own imprint. According to the New York Times, the decision for a self-published author like Wild to start her own publishing imprint is “the latest sign that independent authors are catching up to the publishers in the sophistication of their marketing and the scope of their ambitions.”
Happy birthday to poet, novelist, playwright, and activist Langston Hughes, who was born on this day in 1902. Celebrate the leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance with a poem or two, and peruse a few facts you might not know about him. (Poets.org, Biography.com)
Speaking of literary birthdays, David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest turns twenty today. Writer Tom Bissell asks, “How is it that Infinite Jest still feels so transcendentally, electrically alive?” Bissell offers several theories as to why this particular novel has remained so successful over the past two decades. (New York Times)
At Guernica, writer, artist, and journalist Molly Crabapple talks about her experience as a woman reporting for Vice at Guantánamo Bay, the influences and intersections in her multi-genre work, and her new memoir, Drawing Blood (HarperCollins, 2015), which reflects on her work as an artist, a reporter, and an activist. “If there’s a theme in my work, it’s that I like to focus on smart people who are facing oppression and who are fighting back against it.”
Actress Meg Ryan is set to direct The Book, a romantic comedy set in the publishing world. Delia Ephron, who collaborated with Ryan on the 1988 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, will write the screenplay. (Deadline)
Be wary of programs and apps that promise to increase your speed-reading skills, a new report from the Journal of Psychological Science in the Public Interest warns. The report finds that most of the results from such courses and apps are overstated, and comprehension and accuracy suffers at the cost of speed. (Guardian)
Simon & Schuster will publish a biography of music icon David Bowie in 2017. Paul Morley will write the biography, which will be titled The Age of Bowie. Bowie passed away on January 10. (Flavorwire)
Elon Green, a former student of Saul Bellow, recalls his experience conducting the last interview with Bellow, and discusses what he learned from the novelist and teacher over the years. (Hazlitt)
Are you a writer who is still resistant to poetry’s coolness? TeenVogue is here to prove to you wrong: These nine young poets—including Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, and Fatimah Asghar—are “proving the genre is more vibrant than ever.”
