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:
Using the Twitter hashtag #ShareYourRejections, dozens of writers, including Laila Lalami, Kaveh Akbar, Saeed Jones, and Roxane Gay, share their stories of being rejected by literary journals, agents, MFA programs, and more.
The Paris Review has announced it will work with guest poetry editors for its next four issues. The four editors—Henri Cole, Shane McCrae, Monica Youn, and Vijay Seshadri—discuss the state of poetry.
U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith has announced the tour for her new anthology of American poetry, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, which will be published by Graywolf Press on September 4. (Library of Congress)
Smith’s anthology is featured in The Anthologist: A Compendium of Uncommon Collections, a new column that highlights forthcoming literary anthologies. (Poets & Writers)
“To recognize a pattern and a meaning and an order in the world you didn’t quite see before is exhilarating, and sometimes even exalting…” Rebecca Solnit shares what moves her in literature. (New York Times)
Listen to Solnit read from her forthcoming essay collection, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays), in the latest episode of Ampersand: The Poets & Writers Podcast.
For all the horror fans out there—NPR has put together a list of readers’ hundred favorite horror novels and stories, curated by an expert panel of horror writers.
“It’s a shock, whenever you leave the U.S., to realize how much other people understand that history matters, to witness how that understanding manifests itself in their conversation, in how they talk of their lives and the world.” Kaitlyn Greenidge describes traveling to Anguilla for a literary festival. (Medium)
Bookstore sales for the first six months of 2018 are down 1 percent compared to the same period last year. (Publishers Weekly)
Sophie Gilbert takes a closer look at why Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women and how the author dealt with the novel’s popularity. (Atlantic)
