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:
Don DeLillo’s new novel, Zero K, which will be published next month, has already been optioned for television by FX. New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani calls Zero K DeLillo’s “most persuasive since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece, Underworld.” (Deadline)
Signature has compiled a reader’s guide to the work of George Saunders, the short-story master who will publish his first novel next year.
“The murky area between genres has always been the place where I feel most at home.” At the Millions, poet-novelists April Bernard, Idra Novey, and Jennifer Tseng discuss the pleasures of writing between genres, as well as their most recent works.
Celebrated essayist and novelist Marilynne Robinson announced that she will retire from her teaching position at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the end of the current semester. Robinson has taught in the program for twenty-five years, and instructed hundreds of writers, including current workshop director Lan Samantha Chang and Pulitzer Prize–winner Paul Harding. (Iowa City Press-Citizen)
An educator and doctoral student at Indiana University recently earned a new title: Official Poet of the Indianapolis 500. Reviving a tradition that began in the 1920s, Adam Henze’s poem “For Those Who Love Fast, Loud Things” will appear in the Indy 500 race program. The poem won him $1,000 and two tickets to the fast, loud event on May 29. (ABC News)
Prolific fiction and nonfiction writer Jenny Diski has died from lung cancer at age sixty-eight. Since her diagnosis in 2014, Diski wrote widely about her experience with cancer for the London Review of Books, where she had been a regular contributor since 1992. The magazine has made all of her articles—more than two hundred—available online. (Guardian)
At Electric Literature, writer Nicholas Seeley examines the cultural and political foundations surrounding early twentieth century noir literature, and what noir’s recent resurgence suggests about our current sociopolitical climate.
