Roberto Bolaño Theater Adaptation, Writing Project Abandonment, and More

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:

Roberto Bolaño’s 900-page novel 2666 is getting a theatrical adaptation, thanks to Powerball Lottery winner Roy Cockrum, who used his jackpot winnings to back the project and support the theater arts. The Goodman Theater in Chicago will produce the five-hour adaptation for its 2015-2016 season. (New York Times)

“There’s that layering of selves that we can have with someone else across a long relationship.” At Guernica, Ariel Lewiton interviews poet and creative nonfiction author Maggie Nelson about gender fluidity in her forthcoming book, The Argonauts, which will be released in May by Graywolf Press.

“A certain amount of discarding might actually be beneficial, that the decomposing matter of abandoned ventures provides a fertile loam in which other more viable projects take root.” At the New York Times, Mark O’Connell examines the unexpected benefits of abandoning writing projects.

Besides being successful novelists, what do S. E. Hinton, Lev Grossman, and Orson Scott Card have in common? They all admit to have written fanfiction. (Vulture)

A special screening of the 2011 documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times was held Sunday at the South by Southwest Music and Arts Festival in Austin, Texas, to pay tribute to Times columnist David Carr. Carr passed away in February at age fifty-eight. (Hollywood Reporter)

At the Telegraph, Gaby Wood considers the critical success and commercial failure of Samantha Harvey’s 2014 novel, Dear Thief, and why many great novels fail to get much public notice. 

In this morning’s Tournament of Books opening-round match-up, Roxane Gay’s novel An Untamed State, beat out Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. (Morning News)