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:
The recipients of the 2017 PEN Literary Awards were announced last night in New York City. Hisham Matar took home the inaugural $75,000 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for his memoir, The Return; Syrian poet Adonis received the $50,000 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature; Rion Amilcar Scott received the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction; and Angela Morales won the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
In other award news, the literary translation website Three Percent has announced the longlists for its 2017 Best Translated Book Awards, given annually for the best books of translated poetry and fiction published in the previous year. (Millions)
Amazon has announced it will work with Barry Jenkins, the director of the movie Moonlight, to develop a television series adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad. (New York Times)
Publishers Weekly surveys the nonprofit literary organizations that are taking a stand against the current administration by defending free speech and government funding for the arts.
At the Atlantic, Dustin Illingworth considers the political radicalism and the “abiding insistence on the elasticity of literary art” of Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar. Literature Class, a new translation of eight lectures that Cortázar delivered at the University of California in Berkeley in 1980, was released today by New Directions.
Rigoberto González talks with Divedapper about resisting the romantic image of the starving artist, the impact a writer can have beyond the world of awards and publications, and his memoir-in-progress about masculinity.
Elizabeth Flock rounds up some of the poems and immigration stories that people have shared as part of the Poetry Coalition’s “Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration” initiative. (PBS NewsHour)
It’s tax season! Electric Literature has some tips for writers, especially those who freelance, on how to file taxes.
