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:
“PEN has long stood with writers and creators who have suffered assaults aimed to suppress the dissemination of their ideas. We believe firmly that violence is never justified as a reaction to speech, no matter how offensive that speech may be to some.” PEN American Center has sent a letter to the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment in protest of the company’s decision to pull the release of the film The Interview following hacker threats. Salman Rushdie, Stephen Sondheim, Tony Kushner, Richard Serra, John Ashbery, and Neil Gaiman have signed the letter in support.
A year of writing advice: Joe Fassler looks back at interview highlights from the Atlantic’s weekly series “By Heart,” in which authors chose their favorite literary lines and described how they shaped them.
If you are having trouble sleeping, your e-reader might be the culprit. In a study comparing participants who read a light-emitting e-book before bed and participants who read a printed book for the same amount of time, the electronic devices “decreased [participants’] levels of sleepiness…and substantially suppressed the normal bedtime rise of melatonin.” (New York Times)
“Distraction and split attention will be mandatory. So will aimless drifting and intuitive surfing.” Author, poet, and English professor Kenneth Goldsmith will teach a creative writing course at University of Pennsylvania next semester called “Wasting Time on the Internet.” (Atlantic)
Booktrack, an application that allows self-published authors to add soundtracks to their e-books, now has over one million users. The press release for Booktrack states that the tool is also beneficial in classroom settings and improves student literacy by “help[ing] students more deeply engage with creative writing, essays, novels, and poetry studies.” (GalleyCat)
It’s a Middle English holiday miracle! Somehow, fourteenth century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer is on Twitter and is “heere to helpe yow wyth advyce and counsel regarding the seasoun of holidayes.” (NPR)
Are you having difficulty choosing a name for your literary magazine? Electric Literature’s handy “How to Name Your Lit Mag” chart is here to help.
