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:
Yesterday PEN America filed a lawsuit in federal court against President Trump for attacking journalists and media outlets. “When President Trump crosses the line and threatens to use his authority to punish the media, or actually does so, it is vital for the courts to step in and affirm that such threats and reprisals are unconstitutional,” wrote Jennifer Egan, PEN’s President, and Suzanne Nossel, PEN’s CEO.
“You know, power is such a male word. Being dominant is not anything I care about. What I care about is being effective, being respected.” Amanda “Binky” Urban—literary agent for writers such as Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Michael Pollan, and Richard Ford—talks about how she built her career. (Vulture)
Anna Burns has won the 2018 Booker Prize for her third novel, Milkman. (Poets & Writers)
At the Guardian, Claire Armitstead applauds the judges’ decision to select Burns’s “frankly brain-kneading” novel as a “smartly provocative choice—one that has been waiting to be made as the publishing industry searches for the soul of its next generation.”
BuzzFeed has launched a monthly online book club; its first pick is Kathy Wang’s novel, Family Trust.
Terrance Hayes joins CBC Radio to talk about poetic practice, writing after Trump was elected president, and the unbridled imagination of America.
Listen to Hayes read from his most recent collection, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, in a recent episode of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast.
Jeff Jackson and Laura van den Berg discuss the ethics of writing violence. (Work in Progress)
Publishing executive Jonathan Merkh has launched Forefront Books, a hybrid publishing company—a publisher that doesn’t offer advances but a split of the profits—that will focus on memoirs, nonfiction inspirational books, and business books. (Publishers Weekly)
Inspired by tsundoku, the Japanese word for the practice of piling up books you might never read, Atlas Obscura invites readers to share their “shameful stacks of unread books.”
