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:
Twenty prominent children’s authors have released a statement condemning the Department of Justice’s recent actions of separating immigrant children from their families and holding them in detention centers at the United States–Mexico border. Since Monday the group has raised more than $100,000 in donations to provide legal aid for detained immigrants. (Publishers Weekly)
Meanwhile, the New York Times recommends three books on the toll of migration on children.
The 2018 Indie Book Awards have been announced. The annual awards, given in more than seventy categories, recognize the best books of the year published by independent presses and self-published authors.
Amazon’s editorial team has released its picks for the best books of the year so far, including two novels featured in Poets & Writers’ First Fiction 2018 roundup: There There by Tommy Orange and A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza.
National Youth Poet Laureate Patricia Frazier speaks with the Chicago Tribune about her influences, her summer reading list, and how poetry can serve “as another form of organizing, as another form of activism, because if I reach up to somebody and I open their eyes to a new world, that could change their ideas.”
Andrew Sean Greer, this year’s Pulitzer Prize in Fiction winner, shares five books that were important to him when he was coming out. (Washington Post)
The Oxford English Dictionary is asking English speakers around the world to suggest regionally distinctive words to add to its record. Early submissions include New Zealand’s “munted” and Scotland’s “dookers.” (Guardian)
