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:
Yale University Library has awarded the 2017 Bollingen Prize to Jean Valentine for her 2015 poetry collection, Shirt in Heaven. The biennial $165,000 award is given to an American poet for a book published in the previous two years or for lifetime achievement in poetry.
“We may call some of it ‘alternative history’ or ‘an alternative universe,’ but make absolutely no pretense that our fictions are ‘alternative facts.’” Ursula Le Guin writes a letter to the editor of the Oregonian rebutting another reader’s letter claiming that “alternative facts” are like science fiction.
“While Ralph Waldo Emerson and other white writers were fretting about what a new American literature might look like, Douglass was busy producing it.” In honor of Black History Month, Ron Charles considers the legacy of Frederick Douglass. (Washington Post)
Fiction writer Bharati Mukherjee has died at age seventy-six. The Indian-born American writer, known for both her novel Jasmine and her story collection The Middleman and Other Stories, often wrote about the immigrant experience in America. (New York Times)
“When crisis is so acute, it seems useless to point out the crisis. It made me wish I had more poems that offered some movement beyond diagnosis, some vision from ‘yes, but’ to ‘yes, but...and....’” Poets Solmaz Sharif and Rickey Laurentiis discuss empathy, politics, and writing in the inaugural issue of SUBLEVEL.
“Poetry is a diamond-making process.” Kaveh Akbar interviews poet Roger Reeves at Divedapper.
The Kenyon Review interviews Huda Al-Marashi about writing as a Muslim American, the country’s divided understanding of immigrants, and her memoir-in-progress.
The Millions, Kirkus Reviews, and Bustle preview some exciting books published this month.
