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:
Today is National Handwriting Day, so write a letter to a friend, copy your favorite literature passage, and read this handwritten list of Joan Didion’s favorite books. (GalleyCat)
Speaking of handwriting, if you want to send a handwritten letter, but are also tech-obsessed, there are now bots that mimic your handwriting, which allow you to send letters as quickly as you write e-mails. The bots generate handwritten letters based off of individual handwriting samples. “The bot doesn’t just copy letters; it learns spacing patterns, angulation, how a person connects certain letters, and how far someone veers from the margins.” (Fast Company)
If robots can write letters, they can also write novels. However, the quality of the novels remains in question: “Kitty couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. Her nerves were strained as two tight strings,” an algorithm “wrote” in 2008. (BBC News)
Meanwhile, English classes are not immune to technological saturation. An increasing emphasis on teaching technical skills has shifted how the humanities are taught. At the Atlantic, Michael Godsey examines the “noticeable de-prioritization of literature” in English classes.
E-tailer Amazon’s growing power in the publishing world continues to create controversy. Listen to Joe Konrath and Matthew Yglesias (Amazon advocates) debate Franklin Foer and Scott Turow (Amazon opponents) about the motion, “Amazon is the Reader’s Friend” at NPR.
The Poetry Foundation has rounded up more news about Claudia Rankine’s double National Book Critics Circle Award nomination—in both the nonfiction and poetry categories—for her book Citizen: An American Lyric.
According to a Digital Book World survey, one third of published authors make less than five hundred dollars a year from their writing. (Guardian)
At the New York Times, authors Thomas Mallon and Ayana Mathis discuss which literary figure is overdue for a biography. Mallon suggests Tom Wolfe, and Mathis suggests Albert Murray.
