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.
Writer Rachel Kushner shares a diary of her visit with a delegation of writers to East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2016, in which she bears witness to the Israeli military occupation. “This diary is mine of course, but I feel certain that any person, regardless of who they are, of their bias and outlook, would find what I encountered as intolerable as I did.” (n+1)
The Israeli military destroyed the building that housed Samir Mansour Library, a bookstore and publisher in Gaza, in an air strike earlier this week. Two human rights lawyers have since set up a GoFundMe to support the eventual reestablishment of the store. “Even under blockade, it made us feel as a part of the world,” says writer and translator Hanya Aljamal, mourning the loss. (TRT World)
“I will say that from day one, my publisher has been amazing in terms of knowing that I had a message with this book and that I was not changing it.” Zakiya Dalila Harris describes her ambitions for her debut novel, The Other Black Girl, which explores the experience of being Black in white spaces, specifically corporate publishing. (Entertainment Weekly)
“The poolside lending library (such as it was) became my passport to a world of yachts and mansions, to the louche and the inappropriate, to the problems, passions and freedoms of adults.” Elisabeth Egan writes about the unique pleasures of summer reading. (New York Times)
“Not all taste, of course, is related to food. There is the sour flavor of fear. The acrid sting of hunger. A sticky sweetness that might describe hope.” Hannah Howard shares advice on how to write about taste. (Don’t Write Alone)
“We are constantly at a time where we have to remind each other, ‘This has happened before. It didn’t work. Who is this benefiting?’” Randa Jarrar discusses addressing “the amnesia of America” in her memoir, Love Is an Ex-Country. (Electric Literature)
“I never really spent a lot of time writing about myself. It took me a long time before I realized that I was allowed to, and that there would be any interest in that.” José Olivarez talks coming into his own as a writer. (Creative Independent)
Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams has sold the rights to her next two political thrillers, which will feature the same protagonist from her most recent novel, While Justice Sleeps, to Doubleday and Anchor Books. (Publishers Weekly)
