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:
“As we feign surprise at police brutality and our Twitter outrage flits from Ferguson to Staten Island to Cleveland, this is just the discomfiting book we need.” At the Washington Post, Ron Charles reviews T. Geronimo Johnson’s new novel Welcome to Braggsville. Johnson is profiled in the current issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Meanwhile, William J. Maxwell’s new book, F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature, examines the FBI files of black authors such as Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, and James Baldwin. An excerpt centered on Baldwin’s 1,884-page file is reproduced at Publishers Weekly.
Marginalia continues to fascinate the public. The New York Society Library is currently hosting an exhibit featuring annotated books from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries called Readers Make Their Mark. The exhibit will run until August 15. (New York Review of Books)
As more people in France purchase their books online, French booksellers are concerned about online retail giant Amazon’s threat to the country’s bookstores. Some booksellers believe Amazon undermines French literary culture. (PBS)
“This is the best time for a writer to get real, to depict reality as they see it, without compromises, without fear.” In an essay for the Millions, Jonathan Russell Clark writes about the art of crafting final sentences.
In a controversial industry trend, an increasing number of publishing executives at large houses such as HarperCollins and Little, Brown are bypassing literary agents altogether and inviting open submissions of manuscripts. (Guardian)
Over at Medium, Christopher Pierznik discusses the aftermath of publishing a book that doesn’t sell well.
