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:
“Someone can tell you to like something. Someone can tell you this is bad or this is good or this what you’re supposed to be reading or this is what you’re supposed to like, but none of that matters. Read and create your own standards of discernment.” Philadelphia poet laureate Raquel Salas Rivera talks about the power of poetry and the importance of Philadelphia as a sanctuary city with a diverse population. (Bustle)
“Young people dressed in bright puffer jackets and pom pom hats were accompanied by older chaperones, some wearing buttons and stickers, and holding signs that conveyed simple messages of urgency: Protect kids, not guns, Books not bullets, and Arms are for hugging, not for killing…” Three editorial staffers from the New York Review of Books report on the March for Our Lives this past weekend in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, the Guardian interviews New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma about Brexit, the current political climate, and the process of writing his new memoir, A Tokyo Romance.
Seven lawyers weigh in on the lawsuit Harper Lee’s longtime lawyer has brought against the Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Aaron Sorkin. Lee’s lawyer argues that the script departs too far from the novel. (New York Times)
The Pew Center reports that 24 percent of adult Americans have not read a book in the last year and breaks down the demographics of these non-readers.
In response to an animation of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” Atlantic readers weigh in on the perennial question of whether or not the poem is “America’s most widely misread literary work.”
The Intercept talks with poet and sociologist Eve L. Ewing about working as a public school teacher, the political history of Chicago, Black Panther, and her debut poetry collection, Electric Arches.
Read more about Ewing in Poets & Writers’ thirteenth annual debut poets feature.
