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.
In Pittsburgh, a 1615 edition of the Geneva Bible has been returned to the city’s Carnegie Library after being declared stolen two years ago. A former library archivist and a local bookstore owner have been accused of stealing the Bible and more than three hundred other items from the library. (Atlas Obscura)
At last week’s Publishing Triangle Awards, prizes went to poets Hieu Minh Nguyen and Margaree Little; novelists John R. Gordon and Joseph Cassara; nonfiction authors Imani Perry and Alexander Chee; and prose and poetry writer Ely Shipley. Julian Randall received the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, while Jaime Manrique took home the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. The annual awards are given for LGBTQ poetry, fiction, and nonfiction published in the previous year. (Publishers Weekly)
Penguin Books UK is rushing the publication of This Is Not a Drill, the handbook by activist group Extinction Rebellion that combines information on climate change and practical advice on environmental activism. The manuscript went to the printers in just ten days, and is scheduled to release on June 3. (Guardian)
For the end of National Poetry Month, NPR offers up a “bouquet of poets,” including Fatimah Asghar, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Ada Limón.
Over at the Rumpus, Asghar talks about editing Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology of Muslim writers who are women, queer, nonbinary, genderqueer, and/or trans.
“The first time I met Kazuo Ishiguro, he carried a guitar and a portable typewriter and confessed to feeling divided between short stories and rock music.” At the Guardian, former Faber & Faber editor in chief Robert McCrum remembers the “cultural bonanza” of working at the publishing house.
At TIME, author Ma Jian talks about combatting censorship in his new novel, China Dream. “My hope is that the young people of today will have an opportunity to reconnect with their own history that has been denied them.”
Australian poet Les Murray has died at age eighty. Murray, the author of almost thirty books, was listed as one of Australia’s National Living Treasures. (ABC)
