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:
Author John Irving delivered the eulogy at Günter Grass’s memorial service in Germany yesterday. Of the late Nobel Prize–winner, Irving said: “There are no writers left—that is, no one who could write election speeches for Willy Brandt and a novel set in 1647 at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, as well as a novel that includes a talking fish on trial for male chauvinism with the history of the potato’s origins in Prussia.” (Globe & Mail)
On Sunday night in New York City, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write closing lecture at the PEN World Voices festival. The author discussed the various “codes of silence” that govern public conversation in America that cover up truths, and how choosing “to write is to reject silence.” (Guardian)
With another National Poetry Month having come and gone, Academy of American Poets executive director Jennifer Benka addresses the current state of American poetry and responds to the continuous press claims that “poetry is dead.” (Huffington Post)
British playwright Mark Ravenhill has adapted Franz Kafka’s 1914 novel The Trial as a radio play. At the Telegraph, Ravenhill explains his reasoning for setting his adaptation in a contemporary office environment. In related news, listen to actor Benedict Cumberbatch read Kafka's Metamorphosis for BBC Radio.
Speaking of radio, Michael Nardone recently transcribed poet Susan Howe’s 1979 WBAI/Pacifica Radio interview with poet Bernadette Mayer for Jacket 2.
At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ruth Margalit discusses several novelists, including Ben Lerner, Karl Knausgaard, and Elena Ferrante, who write what could be considered “negative meta-fiction”—that is, they write about not writing: “Writing About Not Writing Something Else may feel at times stilted or pat, a way of scoring fast points with the reader. But it has given rise to a new mode of storytelling: honest, anxious, seemingly distracted yet painstakingly precise, and yes, perhaps annihilating too.”
Margaret Atwood and Roberto Calasso have been named foreign honorary members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The authors will be honored at a ceremony later this month. (GalleyCat)
At the Guardian, Kate Kellaway interviews Mary Norris, New Yorker copy editor and author of Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.
