John Berryman’s Antic Imagination, Grimms’ Gruesome Fairytales, and More

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:

Priests and poets joined together last week to honor Flannery O’Connor’s induction into the American Poets Corner at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City. John Berryman, Katherine Anne Porter, James Baldwin, and Sylvia Plath are among Poets Corner’s previous inductees. (New Yorker)

“It is thrilling, if sometimes unnverving, to be in the presence of an antic imagination.” At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Christopher Merrill reviews a new edition of poet John Berryman’s famous and conflicted work, The Dream Songs.

Luna Luna Magazine has compiled a list of LGBTQ-friendly graduate creative writing programs across the country. Selection criteria included programs that provide a welcoming environment for LGBTQ students, feature LGBTQ faculty, and encourage students to “engage with queer or gender/sexuality studies.” The list features, among others, the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine, the Mills College MFA program in Oakland, California, and the Northeast Ohio MFA program.

A never-before-published first edition English translation of the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales features uncensored versions of the classic tales. The stories in The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (Princeton) are stripped of their added Christian ideology, resulting in much more gruesome versions than those told at bedtime for over two hundred years.

Barnes & Noble has added a print service for self-published authors. The Nook Press Print Service prints and delivers books to authors’ homes within a week after placing an order. (Publishers Weekly)

In more major publisher news, Amazon has won the rights to sell domain names ending in .book, beating out eight other companies including Google and Bowker. It has been suggested that Amazon paid between five and ten million dollars for the rights in a private auction. (Register)

In a section from the VICE news literary series, “Behind the Bars: Guantanamo Bay,” editors investigate books that have been banned from the prison’s library, and the reasons behind the banning. Some of the inaccessible titles include The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare and Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. (GalleyCat)

Richard Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize–winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, is shortlisted for yet another prize (albeit a more cringe-worthy one): The Literary Review’s annual Bad Sex in Fiction award. Flanagan earned his shortlist spot for a passage “in which the act of love is interrupted by a dog killing a fairy penguin.” The eight shortlisted books include the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham, and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. The winner will be announced December 3. (Guardian)