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:
“As a writer, I never wish to put constraints upon creativity nor do I think anything is off limits to someone simply because of who they are. Mr. Benioff and Mr. Weiss are indeed white and they have as much a right to create this reimagining of slavery as anyone. That’s what I’m supposed to say, but it is not at all how I feel.” Roxane Gay writes an op-ed for the New York Times about HBO’s upcoming TV show Confederate, which is produced by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and reimagines a world where the South secedes from the Union and slavery continues to exist.
Literary Hub rounds up the most anthologized poems of the past twenty-five years from a sample of twenty anthologies. The most anthologized poem? William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
The Millions offers ten ways to organize your bookshelf, including chronologically, by color, randomly, and autobiographically.
Samantha Hunt talks with NPR about her new story collection, The Dark Dark, and the “absolute wonder and absolute unknown mystery” of being a mother, how a novel is a broken short story, and why America is obsessed with the adolescent girl.
The Frick museum of art announced they will publish a collection of small books, called Frick Diptychs, that will pair a masterpiece from the Frick collection with a critical or literary essay. Novelist Hilary Mantel will write the first installment about a Hans Holbein portrait of Sir Thomas More, which will be published next April. (New York Times)
“In today’s Russia, Alexievich’s work is a Rorschach test for political beliefs: among the beleaguered, liberal opposition, she is frequently seen as the conscience of the nation…. Mainstream opinion sees her as a turncoat whose books degrade Russia and Russians.” The Guardian profiles Belarusian writer and 2015 Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich.
The BBC looks at the Russian history of samizdat, or self-published works that were mostly written in defiance of government censorship from the 1950s to the 1980s, and how writers distributed these works in ingenious ways, such as sewing them into pillows or shoes, printing them on microfilm, or binding them with a fake cover.
“We should despair at a world filled with thousands of self-indulgent, posturing books that are nothing more than advertising and an ineffective means to an unrealistic end.” Ryan Holiday makes a case for why not everyone should write a book. (Quartz)
