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:
In what is considered a somewhat unusual archive acquisition, New York University’s Fales Library has acquired the archives of art and literary journal Triple Canopy. While libraries typically acquire the archives of long-established print publications, the New York City–based Triple Canopy was established in 2007, and publishes its content exclusively online. As the journal continues to publish original digital content, the library will continue to add to its archive. Marvin J. Taylor, director of the Fales Library, said that the partnership would help create “new ways of preserving born-digital artistic production.” (New York Times)
One way to combat the prevalence of literary deserts—impoverished areas where children have limited access to books—could be to install book vending machines in these neighborhoods. In Washington, D.C., a new program called Soar With Reading provides vending machines that dispense free books for children at various locations, such as grocery stores and churches. (U.S. News & World Report)
Since its release on July 14, Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman has already sold 1.1 million copies in the United States and Canada. The novel is the fastest-selling book in publisher HarperCollins’s history. (ABC News)
Alan Cheuse, author and NPR book reviewer, is in a coma after a traumatic car accident last week. Cheuse’s family has set up a page on CaringBridge.org to share updates about his condition. In March, Fig Tree Books published Cheuse’s novel Prayers for the Living. (Los Angeles Times)
Today would be Ernest Hemingway’s 116th birthday. The Nation has reprinted Nelson Algren’s profile on Hemingway following the author’s death in 1961. “No American writer since Walt Whitman has assumed such risks in forging a style, and the success of these risks was not accidental.” For more Hemingway inspiration, read his 1954 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. (Brain Pickings)
At Hazlitt, eleven prominent literary figures confess which famous books they have not read and give reasoning for such omissions. “I’ve got a large, Charles Dickens–shaped hole in my reading life,” admits New York Times book critic Dwight Garner.
“Publishing is a corporatized, market-driven, bottom-line privileging of the blockbuster in a world where, as Will Self puts it, ‘market choice is the only human desideratum.’” Author Fiona O’Connor laments the corporatization of the modern publishing industry. (Irish Times)
