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:
The Brontë Society will publish two unpublished manuscripts by Charlotte Brontë in the fall. The manuscripts, a poem and a story, were found in a book belonging to Charlotte Brontë’s mother and are annotated by her brother, Branwell. (Bookseller)
With March Madness in full swing, Howard Axelrod describes teaching a poetry workshop at Loyola University during the school’s basketball victory over the University of Nevada: “To my amazement, the spirit of the game, the sense of all being on the same team, carried into our discussion of a student’s poem.” (New York Times)
Speaking of March Madness, Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream have advanced to the zombie round of the Tournament of Books. The championship will be held on March 30. Read more about the tournament in “A Different Kind of March Madness.” (Poets & Writers)
Meanwhile, the March Shredness tournament—a “literary tournament of hair metal songs”—has advanced to the final four, with writers Elena Passarello and Beth Nguyen weighing in on today’s match between Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly.”
With the growing number of authors accused of sexual misconduct, publishers, agents, and editors are facing hard choices about whether or not to work with accused writers. (New York Times)
The shortlist for the 2018 Folio Prize was announced last night and includes Mohsin Hamid, Elizabeth Strout, and Sally Rooney. The annual £20,000 award is given for a book in any genre published in the United Kingdom in the previous year.
The Folio Academy also surveyed its three hundred members, who are writers and critics, and found that 99 percent of them believe the Man Booker Prize should no longer consider books by American authors. U.S. writers, who became eligible for the prize in 2014, have won the award for the past two years. (Publishing Perspectives)
In other prize news, last week PEN announced the finalists for the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. The finalists for the annual $25,000 award are Weike Wang, Adelia Saunders, Lisa Ko, Curtis Dawkins, and Ian Bassingthwaighte.
Two months after she left her position as president and publisher of Simon & Schuster’s Atria Publishing Group, Judith Curr will join HarperCollins as the president and publisher of HarperOne, Amistad, and Rayo in April. (Publishers Weekly)
