Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories.
The Whiting Foundation has revealed the winners of this year’s Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes. The print journal prizewinners are the Massachusetts Review and Bellevue Literary Review, while the print development grant recipient is the Arkansas International. Meanwhile, Latin American Literature Today earned the digital prize and Full Stop earned the digital development grant. (Publishers Weekly)
MacDowell has announced 136 new fellowship recipients, whom it will welcome over the course of the fall and spring, nearing full capacity after interruptions due to the pandemic. Among the class of incoming fellows are over fifty writers, including Sara Borjas, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Jason Reynolds. Fellows are granted residencies of up to eight weeks and receive meals, lodging, and a private studio.
Librarian Nancy Pearl will receive the 2021 Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, which honors lifetime achievement and outstanding service. Among the highlights of her distinguished career, Pearl established a citywide common read program in Seattle in 1998, leading to the proliferation of similar programs across the country. In an interview with Library Journal, Pearl said, “Although I won the award this year, I am accepting it on behalf of all the public library workers who bring their communities together through the good work they do.”
“We have to find ways to survive capitalism, all while bucking against it—as quiet or futile as our bucking might feel.” Kayleb Rae Candrilli writes about acts of creative recovery under capitalism. (Harriet)
“We spent a week watching hordes of people rush to the Kabul airport in the hopes of escaping a bleak future, one that would have been a return to the past.” Nadia Hashimi recommends essential nonfiction about Afghanistan. (Electric Literature)
“The time came when I had to separate from the book. It had to stop being a part of me.” Atticus Lish recalls the emotional labor behind his latest novel, The War for Gloria. (Paris Review Daily)
“I love novels that make the reader deeply, uncomfortably complicit with the immorality or evils being described, or that reveal the hypocrisy of the reader’s own weak good intentions.” Lauren Groff describes her reading life in the latest installment of Shelf Life at Elle.
Up north, the longlist for Canada’s 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize has been revealed. The prize offers $100,000 CAD for a work of fiction. (CBC)
