Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories.
ViacomCBS has announced it is looking to sell Simon & Schuster. Although ViacomCBS chief executive Robert M. Bakish praised the publisher as a “marquee asset,” he argued it is “not a core asset of the company, it is not video-based, it doesn’t have significant connectivity to our broader business.” (New York Times)
Ronan Farrow has decided to sever ties with his publisher, Hachette Book Group, after learning one of the corporation’s other imprints, Grand Central, will publish Woody Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing. In a statement Farrow noted his disappointment that Hachette chose to publish his father’s manuscript “after other major publishers refused to do so and concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill—a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse.” (Slate)
The newly released audiobook for Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport is forty-five hours and thirty-four minutes long. The Guardian spoke with audio publisher W. F. Howes and voice actor Stephanie Ellyne to learn more about the recording process.
“What is the effect of breaking that most cardinal rule of a story unfolding word by word, page after page?” David Schwartz considers works by Carmen Maria Machado, Rick Moody, and Julio Cortázar that experiment with structure and challenge the convention of linear storytelling. (Literary Hub)
The Paris Review will award its 2020 Plimpton Prize to Jonathan Escoffery for his story “Under the Ackee Tree,” and the 2020 Southern Prize to Leigh Newman for “Howl Palace.” The annual prizes honor writers who have recently appeared in the Paris Review; the $10,000 Plimpton Prize honors a “a new voice in fiction,” while the $5,000 Southern Prize honors “humor, wit, and sprezzatura.”
“Reverse Cowgirl is not autobiography or memoir in that I don’t claim to arrive at any truth of the self. I’m interested in our opacity with ourselves.” McKenzie Wark discusses her skepticism toward memoir, and the writing process behind her recent not-memoir, Reverse Cowgirl. (BOMB)
Patty Yumi Cottrell and Jessi Jezewska Stevens wander the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City while discussing Stevens’s debut novel, The Exhibition of Persephone Q. (Believer)
Michael Palmer talks to PEN Georgia about the artist’s capacity to effect social change.
