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:
Anthology Editions will publish a collection of previously unseen poems by Velvet Underground singer Lou Reed. Do Angels Need Haircuts? will be released in April, along with a recording of the songwriter reading some of the poems in 1971 at St. Mark’s Church in New York City. (Guardian)
Donald Trump has nominated Jon Parrish Peede as the next chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Peede, who worked for several years at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), currently serves as the Senior Deputy Chairman of the NEH. While the NEA and NEH are currently funded through fiscal year 2018, the Trump administration called for the elimination of both agencies in its budget proposal for fiscal year 2019, which was released last month. (Publishers Weekly)
Thirty-eight Nobel laureates, including writers Svetlana Alexievich, J. M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Wole Soyinka, have signed an open letter to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, calling out his “unlawful detention and wrongful conviction of writers and thinkers.” (Guardian)
Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington are adapting Celeste Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere for a limited television series. (Deadline)
The New Yorker considers the legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks as both poet and activist, as depicted in the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, written by poets Nate Marshall and Eve L. Ewing.
Read more about Ewing in the Poets & Writers’ 2017 debut poets feature, “The Whole Self.”
On Wednesday, Sarah Plimpton threw one last party at the New York City apartment where her late husband, Paris Review founding editor George Plimpton, threw his legendary parties. Boris Kachka reports on the event, as well as recent changes at the journal, including editor Lorin Stein’s resignation amid accusations of sexual misconduct. (Vulture)
“Revision is to occupy a poem as spectator instead of as creator.” Poet Carmen Giménez Smith and fourteen other poets on revision. (Millions)
Rachel Kushner talks with Publishers Weekly about writing her forthcoming novel about a California women’s prison, The Mars Room.
