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:
Twenty-four hours, one hundred and fifty readers, three venues, and one long book. This past weekend marked the second biennial Moby-Dick Marathon in New York City. Poet David Shapiro’s account of the Marathon includes comical details, such as, “Horatio, a twelve-year-old wearing a madras blazer and protective eyeglasses, stopped horsing around for long enough to admit that he had only read the abridged version of Moby-Dick.” (New Yorker)
Leslie Feinberg, political activist and author, has died at age 65. Feinberg was best known for her 1994 semi-autobiographical novel Stone Butch Blues, and her LGBT and transgender political advocacy work. (Advocate)
The centenary of poet Dylan Thomas’s birth has launched various celebrations and tributes across the globe. At the Atlantic, James Parker discusses Thomas’s embodiment of the spirit of poetry, much like a rock star who lived hard and died young, despite that much of his poetry, to Parker, does not hold up well.
“There’s a reductiveness here, a critical meanness. We have a way to go before female characters can head out, undefined by gender, to seek the impossible meaning of it all.” Novelist Emma Jane Unsworth examines the reasons behind why the public tends to accept and even sympathize with male anti-heroes, yet dismiss the anti-heroine as simply “unlikeable.” (Guardian)
Speaking of heroes and anti-heroes, at the Wall Street Journal, historian and classics professor Barry Strauss explores the classical and mythical themes in the film and book franchise The Hunger Games. The heroine Katniss is likened to a modern-day (and female) version of the Greek hero Theseus, and the entertainment is reminiscent of ancient Roman gladiatorial games. “We still have rites of passage for young people today. If ours tend to test mental rather than physical stamina, they remain daunting and demanding in their own way—which perhaps explains why the life-or-death stakes of The Hunger Games strike such a deep chord among our decidedly nonclassical teens.”
Celeste Ng, author of the novel Everything I Never Told You, and winner of the Amazon Book of the Year prize, speaks with the Guardian about the reception of her novel, her conflicted feelings about Amazon, and the false suggestion that we live in a post-racial society.
On the eve of the National Book Awards, Mark Krotov argues for the need to bring back a prize that no longer exists: the National Book Award for Translation. (Melville House)
