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:
President Trump has released his budget plan for the next fiscal year, which proposes eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (Wall Street Journal)
Trump’s proposed budget comes weeks after the Hill reported in January that his budget team was planning to cut arts funding. According to the New York Times, the combined annual budgets of the NEA and NEH—approximately $300 million—make up only a tiny fraction of the government’s $1.1 trillion annual discretionary spending. The NEA, which was founded in 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson, has been a target for budget slashing in the past, most notably under Ronald Reagan’s administration. Trump is the first president, however, to propose eliminating the NEA with a Republican majority in the House. Trump’s budget will now go to Congress, who will review and revise the plan in the coming months.
The Washington Post considers the outcome of eliminating the NEA, pointing out how the endowment leverages state, local, and private funding—last year the NEA helped leverage $368 million in state funds—and how many small arts organizations, especially in rural locations, rely entirely on funding from the NEA.
Meanwhile, PEN America continues to circulate its petition to save the NEA. Since January the petition has collected more than two hundred thousand signatures. Change.org has also launched a petition, which has more than forty-five thousand supporters.
The New Yorker has announced that Kevin Young will be the magazine’s new poetry editor starting in November. Young will succeed poet Paul Muldoon, who has served as poetry editor since 2007. (New York Times)
Eleven women writers—including Roxane Gay, Aimee Bender, Elissa Schapell, and Ramona Ausubel—speak up against sexual assault in the literary world as a response to an essay Bonnie Nadzam published last month on the Tin House Blog. In “Experts in the Field,” Nadzam wrote about being sexually abused by teachers during graduate school, and urged women to share their stories. (Literary Hub)
Heidi Julavits profiles the memoirist and novelist Rachel Cusk and her “various literary and public-intellectual personae.” (Cut)
The Huffington Post suggests books to read based on what television series you’re binge-watching. Planet Earth lovers are encouraged to read T. C. Boyles’s novel The Terranauts; Stranger Things fans are told to try Samanta Schweblin’s novel, Fever Dream.
