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:
Do you long for a book club in which you don’t have to talk to the other book club members? At Silent Book Club’s monthly events, which take place in multiple cities, groups meet at a bar with their own books, then sit and read together in silence. (L.A. Magazine)
Think running a marathon sounds intimidating? What about writing poetry for an entire day? The Poetry Marathon, which just completed its fourth year, is an annual event that encourages writers around the world to write one poem every hour for twenty-four hours. Five hundred poets from more than twenty countries participated in this year’s marathon, which was held from August 13 to August 14.
“What we get from the artists, writers, musicians, photographers, and so on who we admire is a sense of encouragement or permission to go ahead and do whatever it is that was maybe latent in us already. For me, range was always one of those things.” Teju Cole discusses the book that changed his life. (Men’s Journal)
WNYC’s the Takeaway interviews poet Evie Shockley about her contribution to the Poets & Writers #DearPresident project, which asked fifty American writers to share their messages for the next commander in chief.
At LibraryReads, librarians throughout the country share their top picks for books published in September.
“How beautiful is that—to have words travel with you through time, like a patient, loyal friend, waiting for you to catch up, to experience enough of life as a woman, a wife, a mother, a human for you to fully appreciate their wisdom? Globe and Mail writer Sarah Hampson shares her love for the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Is it simplicity or style that makes a masterful sentence? An English and comparative literature professor considers the impact of great sentences. “The first sentence of any novel works as an invitation into a new world. Sometimes that invitation is so powerful that the sentence itself takes on a life of its own.” (Aeon)
