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.
“Literature is built on tenderness toward any being other than ourselves. It is the basic psychological mechanism of the novel.” This past weekend Olga Tokarczuk delivered her Nobel lecture at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. A translation of her speech by Jennifer Croft and Antonia Lloyd-Jones is now available online.
The Los Angeles Times reports on Dryland, an online literary journal based in South-Central Los Angeles, which Viva Padilla created in 2015 to represent the perspectives of people born and raised in the area. “We’ve always been creative and we’ve always had something to say,” says Padilla.
The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) has announced a new partnership with Submittable, the online submission management platform. CLMP members will now have access to a unique pricing plan from Submittable, representing an 85 percent discount from the company’s standard rates. (Publisher’s Weekly)
“I had no clear path through poetry. I just wanted it. I loved what it did to my synapses.” At Literary Hub, Gillian Conoley reflects on how her time as a journalist led her to poetry.
John O’Connor visits the writer Barry Lopez at home in western Oregon. Lopez reflects on the arc of his career, resisting despair despite political and climate crises, and his most recent work of nonfiction, Horizon. (Believer)
Brian Evenson offers an introduction to The Complete Gary Lutz out from Tyrant Books this month. Evenson calls Lutz unique and “untranslatable,” noting that the writer’s work is filled with “unexpected word combinations” and the “specific tonal, sonic, and rhythmic relationships within English.” (Paris Review Daily)
Emilio Fraia discusses his story “Sevastopol” and accessing a point of view outside of himself. “The experience I was trying to present was less my own than that of a São Paulo that could be depicted in a horror movie, with green neon lights, seedy venues.” (New Yorker).
Electric Literature selects its fifteen favorite nonfiction books of 2019, including The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom, How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones, and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, among others.
Jones recently answered Ten Questions from Poets & Writers Magazine.
