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:
Luc Sante reflects on the colorful life and personality of iconic musician and poet Lou Reed. (New Yorker)
Author Lionel Shriver discusses the current mode of work for authors and offers this advice: “If you really want to write, the last thing you want to be is a success.” (New Republic)
Hannah Gersen examines Roth Unbound, a new critical study of author Philip Roth’s work, and explores his writing technique and claims that his literary sensibility is misogynistic. (Millions)
Paul Krugman looks at Tom Standage’s new book Writing on the Wall: Social Media—The First 2,000 Years, and draws a line between Elizabethan poetry and blogging. (New York Times)
The Los Angeles Review of Books will launch a new section called Around the World that will feature international writers and cultural figures.
Tim Parks confesses an internal change in how he reacts to narratives in novels or short stories: “My problem with the grand traditional novel…is the vision of character, the constant reinforcement of a fictional selfhood that accumulates meaning through suffering and the overcoming of suffering.” (New York Review of Books)
Salon features a slideshow by poet and photographer Thomas Sayers Ellis inspired by the writing of Maya Angelou.
The Guardian posthumously published the last poem by Seamus Heaney, “In a Field,” in which the late poet reflects on World War I.
