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:
Is commercial fiction more sentimental than literary fiction? Using new techniques in “sentiment analysis,” two professors looked at more than two thousand novels published over the past half-century to test the excessive feelings debate. (New Republic)
Writer and Narrative magazine cofounder Tom Jenks recently announced the publication of his new craft book, A Poetics of Fiction, which is being sold through the Narrative website for $225. The high price has provoked various negative responses from the literary community, and it isn’t the first time Narrative has sparked controversy for its pricing policies—the nonprofit magazine charges more than $20 for most submission fees. (Salon)
“The margins are sites of engagement and disagreement: between text and reader and, to stretch it tenuously further, between author and reader. From Talmudic studies to legal amendments, margins have been the places where texts have been kept alive—alive because they’ve been read and responded to.” A writer considers varied reasons for marginalia’s moment in contemporary culture. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
The life of Victorian writer Oscar Wilde is often studied in terms of his connections with men. A new book by Eleanor Fitzsimons, Wilde’s Women, examines the women who shaped the writer and the figure he became. (Irish Times)
From the fictive to the real, a writer recalls her fascination with literary geography and mapping the worlds of books. (Toast)
Speaking of maps, take a world literary tour with this map that recommends a book from 196 different countries. (Ted.com)
At Aeon, University of Cambridge professor Peter Mandler argues that there is not, in fact, a crisis in the humanities. Mandler says that more people than ever, particularly women, are studying literature and the social sciences.
