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.
Industry veterans Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau are reopening their eponymous imprint, Spiegel & Grau, as an independent publisher. Formerly housed within Penguin Random House, the imprint was shut down in January 2019 during a wave of corporate streamlining. In its new iteration, Spiegel & Grau will publish between fifteen and twenty books each year, in addition to producing original audio content. (New York Times)
The Association of American Publishers has announced Jagriti Publishing House in Bangladesh as the recipient of the 2020 International Freedom to Publish/Jeri Laber Award, which honors “courage and fortitude in defending freedom of expression.” Five years ago, Jagriti founder Faisal Arefin Dipan was murdered by religious extremists due to his association with secular writers. In the years following, Dipan’s widow, Razia Rahman Jolly, took the helm and even expanded the business, opening a bookshop and cultural center to honor the memory of her husband. (Publishers Weekly)
“In a year of canceled fashion weeks and bankrupt clothing brands, a year when social interactions became laced with a sense of danger, must fashion still evolve at the same pace?” Senior editor Mary Wang introduces a special issue of Guernica on “the relationship between fashion and time.”
Paramount TV Studios and Anonymous Content are planning to reboot NBC’s Little House on the Prairie, which charmed audiences in the seventies and eighties. The new series, like its predecessor, will be based on the Little House novels by Laura Ingalls Wilder. (Entertainment Weekly)
“For the first time, I felt powerful—I knew there was at least one person in the world who could understand my pain. I felt an invisible comfort.” Meetra Javed writes in praise of writer and multidisciplinary artist Fariha Róisín and visits the author at home in Brooklyn. (Document)
Samuel Rutter explores sites in New York City and Paris that were of significance to James Baldwin. (T: The New York Times Style Magazine)
The staff at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop share their favorite reads of the year.
Likewise, the staff of Farrar, Straus and Giroux wrote about the best books—old and new—they read in 2020.
Editor’s note: There will be no Daily News next week, December 21 through 25. Coverage will resume December 28.
