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:
“It has become painfully clear over the past few months that her imagined world of gender parity, in which men and women are granted equal opportunities to do the work of a genius, is still quite far away.” On Virginia Woolf’s 136th birthday, Constance Grady reflects on Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own and her vision for the future of women. (Vox)
Since he was a teenager in the late 1980s, James Hyman has collected nearly 160,000 magazines. Stored in a warehouse in London and largely unavailable digitally, the Hyman Archive is now the largest private magazine collection in the world. (New York Times)
A week after Canadian publisher Coach House Books announced it was suspending its poetry program to “think through our mandate,” BuzzFeed reports that a poetry editor at the press, Jeramy Dodds, has been fired due to accusations of sexual harassment.
“She was a crafter of fierce, focused, fertile dreams.” David Mitchell pays tribute to Ursula Le Guin, who died on Monday. (Guardian)
“We can’t call Ursula K. Le Guin back from the land of the unchanging stars, but happily she left us her multifaceted work, her hard-earned wisdom and her fundamental optimism.” Margaret Atwood remembers Le Guin and considers what the acclaimed author would have thought about the #MeToo movement. (Washington Post)
Meanwhile, Conor Friedersdorf looks to fiction for more constructive depictions of sexual consent than found in television or film. (Atlantic)
Open Culture shares the shortest and “most concise” academic paper on writer’s block.
The Millions explores the literary renaissance in Kansas, which includes recent titles from Farooq Ahmed, Sarah Smarsh, and LaShonda Katrice Barnett.
“I admit, I picked you up with unrealistic expectations…” Grant Snider offers a cartoon ode to unfinished books. (New Yorker)
