Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories.
After a chant of “send her back” broke out at a Trump rally last week, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar responded by tweeting lines from Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise.” Now the Guardian and PEN America have invited writers Mira Jacob, Amitava Kumar, Min Jin Lee, Gregory Pardlo, and Andrew Solomon to share inspiring lines from literature about overcoming hatred and racism.
The finalists for the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature have been announced. The $50,000 prize recognizes “significant contributions to world literature” by poets, novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters; the 2020 nominees are Emmanuel Carrère, Jorie Graham, Jessica Hagedorn, Eduardo Halfón, Ismail Kadare, Sahar Khalifeh, Abdellatif Laâbi, Lee Maracle, and Hoa Nguyen. The winner will be announced on October 16.
“Over time, topicality fades, so if the work is to endure, it will do so only because of those literary values.” Salman Rushdie talks to the New Yorker about the importance of good stories and rich characters. Rushdie’s story depicting the opioid crisis, “The Little King,” was published in this week’s issue of the magazine.
New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu has abandoned his pick for state poet laureate after facing backlash over both his choice of candidate and his selection process. Going against convention, Sununu had rejected the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s recommendation of award-winning poet Jennifer Militello to represent the state, instead choosing his own nominee, Daniel Thomas Moran. Moran has been criticized for his lack of connection to the poetry community and for publishing a sexually suggestive poem about Condoleezza Rice. (Guardian)
“I wish that the writers would think more about what they’re doing. People who have had the privilege of living at the dead center of mainstream really need to consider their literal point of view.” Best-selling author Laura Lippman on imperfect protagonists, the newspapers of the sixties, and her twenty-third novel, Lady in the Lake. (Rumpus)
At Tarpaulin Sky, poet Amie Zimmerman recommends poetry collections by Ashley Toliver, Khaty Xiong, Graham Foust, Joseph Donahue, and Wendy Xu. “What matters most is our ability to lay ourselves bare,” Zimmerman observes. “Whether it serves the purpose we wish is up for debate.”
“It was not their ‘confessions’ that made Jonas and Lowell so unforgettable; it was their brilliance of detail which created, in their own unique ways, fully-formed emotional universes that demand repeated visits from us in the future, the further removed we become from their realities.” André Naffis-Sahely on the intersections of poets Stephen Jonas and Robert Lowell. (Poetry Foundation)
And the Library of Congress has put out a call for volunteers to help at this year’s National Book Festival. Hosted at the Washington Convention Center on August 31, the literary extravaganza will feature many authors, including Henry Louis Gates Jr., Barbara Kingsolver, and Richard Powers; two hundred thousand booklovers are expected to attend. (Washington Post)
