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very 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:
In the wake of a recent report from the Hill that the Trump administration wants to eliminate the NEA, Amy Stolls, the literature director at the NEA, talks about the organization’s impact on American literary culture and history. (Forward)
“Everyone had something out here. The love I carried was books. Exceptional books. Books by black authors, their photos often the only black faces I would talk to for weeks.” Rahawa Haile on her experience hiking the Appalachian Trail and the books she carried. (BuzzFeed)
“I Am Not Your Negro,” Raoul Peck’s documentary about writer James Baldwin, opens today. “It doesn’t just make you aware of Baldwin, or hold him up as a figure to be admired from a distance,” writes New York Times film critic A. O. Scott in his review of the film. “You feel entirely in his presence, hanging on his every word, following the implications of his ideas as they travel from his experience to yours.”
Karan Mahajan, Gary Shteyngart, Joyce Carol Oates, and other writers share what books they are reading in the first days of the Trump presidency. (New Yorker)
Publishers Lunch offers a sneak peek at upcoming books with its free e-book series, Buzz Books. The latest installment includes excerpts from fifty-eight titles that will be published in the first half of 2017, including memoirs by Roxane Gay and Richard Ford.
The Wall Street Journal examines the growing number of “expletive-laden book titles,” and the challenges these books pose to both booksellers and reviewers.
The Academy of American Poets asked twelve contemporary black poets, including Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Tyehimba Jess, and Marilyn Nelson, to each recommend a poem to be read during Black History Month.
J. K. Rowling fans the Twitter flames with her tweets against Donald Trump and his supporters. (Star Tribune)
