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:
Junot Díaz is writing a picture book for kids, delivering on a twenty-year-old promise to his goddaughters that he would write a book featuring characters like them. Islandborn, which will be published by Dial Books for Young Readers next spring, tells the story of a Dominican girl living in the Bronx. (New York Times)
“To stand in this library again is a profound experience, a return to a wellspring of story and encouragement.” Rebecca Solnit goes back to the public library of her youth in Novato, California, and explores how libraries might be the last “refuge of a democratic vision of equality.” (Literary Hub)
Jamia Wilson has been appointed the next executive director and publisher of Feminist Press. Wilson will be the first woman of color to hold the position in the press’s forty-seven-year history. (Publishers Weekly)
Meanwhile, Jess Zimmerman has been named the new editor in chief of Electric Literature.
Signature offers an “essay primer for adults,” with explanations and examples of six types of essays: the linear narrative essay, the triptych essay, the collage essay, the experimental essay, the hermit crab essay, and the braided essay.
The Guardian considers the recent spate of men who have written under gender-neutral or female pseudonyms, and how their commercial motivations compare to the tradition of women adopting male pseudonyms to gain more acceptance.
Poet Solmaz Sharif has been awarded the $5,000 Holmes National Poetry Prize, administered by Princeton University’s creative writing program. “Solmaz Sharif’s poems marry an exquisite lyric sensibility to a profound social conscience, and in so doing they urge a renewed sensitivity to the private costs of public conflict,” says Tracy K. Smith, director of the program. Sharif’s debut poetry collection, Look, was published by Graywolf Press in 2016 and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
“Reading does not have to be a comprehensive or linear exercise. Your mind is not a vacuum sweeping up each word mechanically.” The New York Times offers tips for mindful reading.
