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:
Controversy continues to surround independent publisher Red Hen Press after its cofounder and managing editor, Kate Gale, published a piece in the Huffington Post last week defending the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Since the publication of Gale’s article, which many members of the literary community found offensive and culturally insensitive, three members of the press’s advisory board have resigned—Sherman Alexie, Garrett Hongo, and Helena Maria Viramontes—and at least two of Red Hen’s authors have decided to part ways with the press. (Publishers Weekly)
At NPR, Jonathan Franzen discusses the escapism of writing, the guilt that comes with being an author, and his fifth novel, Purity, which hit shelves yesterday.
Speaking of Franzen, Mark Medley considers the author’s divided public reputation. “To some, he represents everything wrong with contemporary literature, a symbol of unchecked privilege and unexamined sexism; to others, he’s the Great American Novelist…a writer who can internalize the foremost issues of the day and bring clarity to them through his fiction.” (Globe & Mail)
The late Oliver Sacks’s final essay, “Urge,” has been published in the September 24 issue of the New York Review of Books. The acclaimed author and neurologist passed away on August 30 after a battle with cancer.
Though Nobel Prize–winning French author Patrick Modiano has published more than twenty-five books in a career spanning four decades, his life remains somewhat of a mystery. James McAuley looks at Modiano’s fiction in relation to his 2005 memoir, Pedigree, and examines how the author’s “search for pre-history” in his writing reflects his life in postwar France. (New Republic)
At the Week, Jessica Hulinger considers four reasons why independent bookstores are thriving “long after analysts predicted their demise,” and despite the success of Amazon.
“Everyone, upon encountering a work of art, has some kind of response, ranging from boredom or incomprehension to amazement and gratitude. In this sense, everyone really is a critic, in a way that not everyone is a painter or a poet.” Writer Adam Kirsch, alongside editor Charles McGrath, discusses whether everyone is qualified to critique the arts. (New York Times)
