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:
At the Nation, fiction writer Joanna Scott makes a case for the educational value of reading “difficult” fiction, as she suggests that “active, creative reading is on the decline” in our culture.
Acclaimed novelist and NPR literary commentator Alan Cheuse died on Friday from injuries sustained in a car accident two weeks earlier. Cheuse contributed book commentary and reviews to NPR’s All Things Considered for twenty-five years. His fifth novel, Prayers for the Living, was published this past spring by Fig Tree Books. He was seventy-five.
“For me there is little difference between the blazing sun, the nighttime jazz, the human flaws, the bound novels or the oral tales of this heroic land. It all comes together in my heart.” At the New York Times, best-selling novelist Walter Mosley reflects on his relationship to the literature of Louisiana.
Since the deadly attack at its Paris offices this past January, satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has amassed something else it was not prepared to handle: a fortune of $33 million. (Vanity Fair)
“Since when am I not contributing to the community if all I want to do is make the art itself?” An introverted writer laments the pressure of writing communities and the increasingly social aspect of what was once considered a solitary art. (Atlantic)
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates lists the ten books he couldn’t live without for the new bookstore installation One Grand, a project curated by editor Aaron Hicklin, in which a number of prominent artists and writers share their literary inspirations. (T Magazine)
“Memoir is a weird genre for a reporter. You end up investigating your own memories, reporting out your past.” William Finnegan talks to Guernica about his years reporting as a staff writer for the New Yorker, and writing his memoir Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, which was published in July by Penguin.
