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:
On Friday, New Republic owner Chris Hughes announced he has sold the magazine to Tin House founder Win McCormack. Hamilton Fish, the publisher of the Washington Spectator, will serve as the magazine’s new publisher and editorial director. Hughes had announced his intention to sell the magazine last month, following the mass resignation of staff members protesting his decision to terminate the New Republic’s top editor. (New York Times)
In publishing scam news, what does it take to become an “Amazon Best-Selling Author?” It seems that it takes two dollars, five minutes, and a photo of one’s foot. (Observer)
The personal writings and essays of Henry James—a key figure in nineteenth-century literary realism for his numerous novels—are currently “enjoying a revival.” In James’s nonfiction, Leo Robson writes at the New Statesman, “We meet James the Freudian, the explorer of family dramas and selfhood, the proto-psychogeographer given to flâneries, a figure whose descendants are neither self-conscious Jamesians such as Alan Hollinghurst and Cynthia Ozick nor self-declared modernists such as Eimear McBride and Tom McCarthy, but rather the likes of Karl Ove Knausgaard and David Shields, who embrace the literary potential of the memoir and the essay.”
The Guardian features an interview with fiction writer Ottessa Moshfegh about her acclaimed debut novel, Eileen, which has recently been optioned for film by producer Scott Rudin.
If you didn’t catch last night’s Academy Awards ceremony, here is a list of the year’s book-to-film adaptations. (Shelf Awareness)
In an interview at the Los Angeles Review of Books, South Asian American author Tanwi Nandini Islam discusses her debut novel, Bright Lines, her path to becoming a writer, and representing a diverse worldview in her work.
And finally, enjoy these visualizations of the punctuation habits of eight famous authors, some of which may surprise you. (Fast Company)
