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:
“Whatever it is out there that’s bigger than I am, that energy, can you help me out? Just help me out this evening as I sit down, and let’s see what we can do. I’m willing to be helped.” Poet Layli Long Soldier talks about writing as an act of prayer. (Creative Independent)
The Financial Times profiles poet Claudia Rankine on the concept of whiteness, why she incorporates prose poems and visual art into her work, and her plans to open a center in New York City to study the “racial imaginary.”
In response to the gaffe at this year’s Oscars—due to an envelope mix-up, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land instead of Moonlight as the winner of best picture—Michael Schaub dredges up similar mix-ups at literary awards. (Los Angeles Times)
Graphic novelist Apostolos Doxiadis lays out the formal advantages of the graphic novel, and looks at the impact of two masterpieces of the form, Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alan Moore’s Watchmen. (Times Literary Supplement)
Jonathan Guyer profiles the Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji and the long series of events that led to Naji’s imprisonment in 2016 for obscenity charges. (Rolling Stone)
“We succumb to binaristic thinking—is the art against Trump or escaping from Trump?” Josephine Livingston argues for cultural criticism written for the community, not for or against Trump. (New Republic)
The New Yorker relates the ordeal that popular Australian children’s-book author Mem Fox faced going through customs at the Los Angeles airport on her way from Melbourne to Milwaukee.
“Why is it that of all genres, travel writing has remained so predominantly male?” Sara Wheeler takes on the question of gender imbalance in the travel-writing field. (Guardian)
