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 National Endowment for the Arts has announced more than $27 million in grants for the 2019 fiscal year, including thirty-five creative writing fellowships, each worth $25,000. This year’s fellows include poets Tiana Clark, Ilya Kaminsky, and Michael Torres.
At PBS NewsHour, Meg Wolitzer describes the emergence of the “funny and angry” narrator of her new novel, The Wife. “I had been working on something else, also in first-person, that was rather serious and a bit airless, and I kept trying to slip in moments of wit. And then I wondered why I should need to sneak wit in.”
Despite increased sales in adult hardcovers and paperbacks, total net book sales in the U.S. last year slipped to $14.5 billion, down 0.4 percent from 2017, according to the Association of American Publishers. University presses had a particularly difficult year, with overall sales down 9.5 percent. (Shelf Awareness)
Researcher and editor Heidi Toffler has died. Toffler collaborated with her husband, writer Alvin Toffler, on nonfiction books about the consequences of rapid change, including their best-selling 1970 debut, Future Shock. (New York Times)
Independent publisher Verso Books is launching Verso Fiction, a new imprint focused on fiction in translation. The imprint will debut its first titles in the fall: Will and Testament, a novel by Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth, and Kitchen Curse, a collection of short stories by Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan. (Publishers Weekly)
One World has released the cover of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel, The Water Dancer, which will be published by the Random House imprint in September. The artwork, commissioned by Coates, is a painting by Calida Garcia Rawles. (New York Times)
In Chester County, Pennsylvania, a discerning thief has broken into Baldwin’s Book Barn and stolen rare and valuable books, including a limited edition of To Kill a Mockingbird. No money was taken from the store register. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Meanwhile, in Maryland, 1929 children’s book The Postman by Charlotte Kuh is finally back on the shelves of the Silver Spring Library, seventy-three years after it was checked out. Mora Gregg, a retired librarian, realized that the book her mother had checked out in 1946 was somewhat overdue and returned it. (Washington Post)
And in good bookstore news: After the threat of closure, New York City’s McNally Jackson is not only staying in its original SoHo location, it’s also opening two new branches this fall, one in South Street Seaport and one in Downtown Brooklyn. (Vulture)
