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:
Norton’s Liveright imprint will publish the letters Nelson Mandela wrote to family, supporters, and government officials, while he was imprisoned for twenty-seven years for protesting against the South African apartheid government. A selection of the letters will be published next July. (New York Times)
In her project “Erasing Infinite,” poet Jenni B. Baker is creating an erasure of every page of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Baker is currently up to page 325 of the 1,079-page novel. (PBS NewsHour)
J. D. McClatchy has announced he will step down as editor of the Yale Review at the end of this month after steering the review for twenty-seven years. The review is in the process of finding a new editor; Harold Augenbraum will serve in the interim. (New Haven Register)
Chinese writer and Nobel Peace Prize–winner Liu Xiaobo has been released from prison, though not custody, to be treated at a hospital for an advanced case of liver cancer. Liu has been imprisoned since 2009 for helping author Charter 08, a manifesto urging the Chinese government to become a liberal democracy. (New York Times)
Michael Bond, the creator of the beloved children’s book character Paddington Bear, has died at age ninety-one. (Los Angeles Times)
Margaux Fragoso has died at age thirty-eight from ovarian cancer. Fragoso published a controversial memoir in 2011, Tiger Tiger, detailing her sexual abuse as a child. (Washington Post)
“What’s a lit mag again? Is it just a mixtape of unconnected works that, in sum, amount to little more than a publication credit in a writer’s bio?” At the Review Review, Versal editor Megan M. Garr considers the purpose of literary magazines and relates her struggles to keep Versal afloat.
Philip Pullman has raised £32,400 for the residents affected by the Grenfell Tower fire by auctioning off the name of a character in his next book. A group of people pitched in to support the winning bid to name the character after a girl who died in the fire, Nur Huda el-Wahabi. (Guardian)
