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:
St. Louis–based literary journal River Styx has announced that its editor and executive director Richard Newman will step down after twenty-two years at the magazine. Under Newman’s leadership, the magazine has published numerous award-winning poets and prose writers, and has won a number of awards. The River Styx board is currently searching for Newman’s replacement. (St. Louis Today)
According to an algorithm devised by authors Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers for creating and publishing best-selling books, Dave Eggers’s 2013 novel The Circle contains all of the elements of a best-selling novel. Archer and Jockers analyzed twenty thousand novels from the past three decades to create their algorithm, which they detail in their forthcoming book, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel. (Independent)
At the Boston Review, poet Lily Blacksell interviews U.K.–based poet Sarah Howe about her writing process, her life in the U.S., and her debut collection, Loop of Jade, which won the prestigious 2015 T. S. Eliot Prize.
Chicago author Asadah Kirkland is launching a new book fair in the city for writers from the African diaspora. The Soulful Chicago Book Fair will be held on July 16, and will gather together more than a hundred black authors for a variety of free literary and musical events. (DNAinfo.com)
At Signature, novelist and literary agent Brenda Bowen provides a reader’s guide to New England literature.
Entropy’s summer reading list features a sizzling array of indie titles, including poetry collections by Aracelis Girmay, Fred Moten, and Brenda Iijia, and new fiction from Jade Sharma, Fuminori Nakamura, and Masande Ntshanga, who is featured in the latest Poets & Writers First Fiction roundup.
“That he wrote some of the greatest short stories of the 20th century seems to me an uncontroversial claim, yet his work in this genre is comparatively obscure.” A look at Samuel Beckett’s history as a short fiction writer. (Guardian)
