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.
As the United States turns a corner in the fight against the coronavirus, NPR is inviting listeners to write poems about how they have been transformed by the pandemic. Submissions must begin with the line “Still I Rise”—a tribute to Maya Angelou’s poem of the same name. Kwame Alexander, NPR’s resident poet, will then craft a “community crowdsourced poem” using lines from the submissions.
Kaya Press, which publishes literature from the Asian and Pacific Island diasporas, has announced the launch of a new imprint, Ink & Blood, which will be dedicated to diasporic Vietnamese literature. The project is a joint venture with the Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network, an arts organization founded by writers Viet Thanh Nguyen and Isabelle Thuy Pelaud.
Over the past three decades, Dexter George has been constantly innovating at his bookstore, Source of Knowledge, which is located in Newark, New Jersey. In addition to offering a diverse inventory of books, George also carries African wares, including drums and masks, and runs a framing business out of the basement. (New York Times)
Publishers Weekly carried out an informal survey to find out how booksellers across the country are responding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s announcement that fully vaccinated people can typically go without a mask, even indoors. Two-thirds of respondents reported they will continue to ask customers to wear masks.
Valeria Luiselli has won this year’s Dublin Literary Award for her most recent novel, Lost Children Archive. Selected from a pool of nominations submitted by libraries worldwide, the prize comes with a purse of €100,000. (Guardian)
“No Bolinas school ever emerges. The varieties of stanza shape, pacing, and rhythmic organization from one poet to another are remarkable.” Dan Chiasson writes about the eclectic poetry community that coalesced in Bolinas, California, several decades ago. (New Yorker)
Playwright and biographer Joan Schenkar died on May 5 at age seventy-eight. She was best known for her biography of Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Miss Highsmith. (New York Times)
Ling Ma, the author of Severance, names the books she considers “literary comfort food” and shares other recommended reading. (Elle)
