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:
“People take the stories that surround them—fictional tales, news articles, apocryphal family anecdotes—then identify with them and borrow from them while fashioning their own self-conceptions. It’s a Möbius strip: Stories are life, life is stories.” At the Atlantic, Julie Beck examines how narrative psychology shapes our lives and impacts our health.
Book censorship alert: Following parental complaints, a Florida high school has removed Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time from its summer reading assignment list. Parents cited profanity and the book’s use of “the Lord’s name in vain” as reasons for their complaints. (Los Angeles Times)
Later this month, HarperCollins will publish J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1915 short story, “The Story of Kullervo,” for the first time. The story, which is a retelling of the 19th-century Finnish epic poem Kalevala, is thought to be Tolkien’s first work of fantasy prose.
At the Oyster Review, novelist Will Chancellor surveys various lessons on ambition from literature and elsewhere, including Hamlet, Silicon Valley, and shock art.
The second installment of Electric Literature’s Writing Life Around the World series features Ukranian author Natalka Sniadanko’s account of how her home country’s turbulent political history has shaped its literary scene.
The schedule for the Academy of American Poets ninth annual Poets Forum, which will be held October 8–10 in New York City, is now available. This year’s event series features readings and conversations from the Academy’s Board of Chancellors, including Claudia Rankine, U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Elizabeth Alexander, C. D. Wright, Mark Doty, and more.
If the thought of viewing original manuscripts, ancient scrolls, First Folios, and Gutenberg Bibles excites you (and why wouldn’t it?), take a look at Bustle’s list of the best museums around the world for book lovers.
