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.
Charles Bernstein has won Yale University’s 2019 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. The prize is awarded biennially to an American poet for a book published during the previous two years or for lifetime achievement, and includes a cash award of $165,000. (YaleNews)
Novelist Sam Savage has passed away at age seventy-eight. Savage’s first book, Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, was published when the author was sixty-five and went on to become an international bestseller. His final book, the story collection An Orphanage of Dreams, was published earlier this month. (Coffee House Press)
Yesterday the National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its annual awards in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, criticism, autobiography, and biography. This year’s nominees include poet Ada Limón for The Carrying and novelist Rachel Kushner for The Mars Room. Poet and critic Terrance Hayes is nominated in two categories, while Tommy Orange won the John Leonard Prize for his debut novel, There There. (Poets & Writers)
Meanwhile, the Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for its 2019 Edgar Allan Poe Awards—commonly known as the Edgars—which honor mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television published or produced the prior year.
Veteran publishers Jamie Raab and Deb Futter have unveiled Celadon Books, a new Macmillan imprint, and its first title, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. (Publishers Weekly)
A British production of To Kill a Mockingbird has been canceled after threats of legal action from Atticus, the Scott Rudin company behind the Broadway hit. (New York Times)
The hand-written manuscript of Omar Ibn Said’s 1831 autobiography has been digitized by the Library of Congress, and can now be viewed online. Said’s text is the only known account of American slavery to be written in Arabic. (Open Culture)
“Most of us were short-changed by educations that ignored ecology. We need clear explanations of climate change, what it means and how to cope with it.” At the Guardian, Annie Proulx recommends the best books for understanding climate change.
This year marks the first mass copyright expiration in over two decades. Among the texts entering the public domain are works by Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sukumar Ray, Jean Toomer, E. E. Cummings, and Kahlil Gibran. (PBS NewsHour)
