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:
Colson Whitehead and Margaret Atwood are among “The 100 Most Influential People” according to TIME Magazine. Whitehead won this year’s Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in fiction for his novel The Underground Railroad; Atwood has been in the public eye even more than usual this year with the increased interest in her dystopian classic novel, The Handmaid’s Tale.
Speaking of Margaret Atwood, Sarah Jones reexamines the impact of The Handmaid’s Tale on feminism in wake of the Hulu television series of the novel that premieres Wednesday and stars Elisabeth Moss. (New Republic)
It’s Pizza Poetry Day in New Orleans! Several pizzerias will deliver pies with a poem taped to the box. The poems are all written by young New Orleans poets who participated in workshops held by Big Class, a writing program for kids from age six to eighteen. (New Orleans Advocate)
“Most of us would prefer our art to simply reinforce, rather than challenge, our worldview, so we tend to read writers who share our backgrounds, our values and so on. We create little artistic bubbles and don’t question them nearly enough.” At the Guardian blog, critic Jessa Crispin urges readers to acknowledge the subjectivity of literary taste.
The 2017 Man Booker International Prize shortlist has been announced. The annual £50,000 prize is given for the best book of translated fiction published in the previous year. The winner will be announced on June 14.
At the New Yorker, Jia Tolentino considers Bill O’Reilly’s 1998 novel, Those Who Trespass: A Novel of Television and Murder, in which a TV newsman loses his job and spends the next decade killing several people at the network in revenge.
In advance of this Sunday—Shakespeare’s death day and also his estimated birthday—Jeanette Winterson reviews Harold Bloom’s new book on Falstaff, the “whiskery swag-bellied omnivorous cornucopia of appetites” in Henry IV, and how the character is a vital force in Western literature. (New York Times)
“[The lyric poem] doesn’t come down on a reader to adopt a particular world view, it implodes that expectation. You find yourself a new person after reading it.” Poet Ishion Hutchinson talks with the Los Angeles Times about the joys of lyric poetry, the influence of music and his native Jamaica on his work, and the legacy of the late Derek Walcott.
“Action is the antidote to despair.” This Saturday poet Jane Hirshfield will lead a group of poets in the March for Science in Washington, D.C. (Poets & Writers)
