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:
Booker Prize–winning novelist Arundhati Roy has joined more than forty other Indian writers and artists in protesting the country’s religious intolerance and violence. Roy, who is best known for her 1997 novel, The God of Small Things, is the latest literary figure to return her award from India’s literary institution, the Sahitya Akademi, in protest that it had not condemned the murders of atheist activists and violence against minority groups. “I believe what artists and intellectuals are doing right now is unprecedented, and does not have a historical parallel. It is politics by other means,” said Roy. (Business Insider)
The Chilean government released a statement yesterday acknowledging that Nobel Prize–winning poet Pablo Neruda may have been killed by Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Neruda’s 1973 death remains a controversial topic; official records stated that the poet died from cancer, but many believed the government had a hand in his death. (Guardian)
The U.K.–based Collins Dictionary has named “binge-watch” the 2015 Word of the Year, beating out “dadbod” for the top spot. Lexicographers at Collins make the decision based on word usage across all media, and noted a 200 percent increase in the usage of “binge-watch” from 2014. Netflix-only shows like House of Cards have certainly aided in the binge-watch phenomenon; see what Lord Michael Dobbs, author of the novel House of Cards, has to say about the word. (CNN, Telegraph)
In 1986, novelist Donna Tartt delivered the valedictorian speech at her Bennington College graduation, and for your reading pleasure Literary Bennington has published a typewritten transcript of the Pulitzer Prize–winner’s speech online. (Literary Hub)
At Lapham’s Quarterly, Andrew McConnell Stott writes about the “sheer gravitational weight” of Lord Byron’s fame, which had “the power to distort everything around it.”
“One of the fascinating things about publishing is the risk is immensely high and you’re never sure of anything.” Author, translator, and publisher Robert Calasso talks about running Italian publishing house Adelphi Edizioni, and his new memoir, The Art of the Publisher, out this week in the U.S. and the U.K. (New York Times)
Meanwhile, six editors and thirty-one editorial board members of the linguistics journal Lingua have quit in protest of the high fees that the magazine’s publisher, Elsevier, charges authors and academic institutions for access to the journal. This staff resignation is one instance of the long-running debate over whether academic journals should be open access or sold by publishers. (Wired)
