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:
Due to millions of dollars in university budget cuts, University of Akron Press—the nonprofit publisher founded in 1988 that sponsors the annual Akron Poetry Prize—was forced to close down on Tuesday. (Ohio.com)
“I have finally started calling myself a ‘traitor who writes,’ after having long hesitated to do so…. But I have decided to accept it because I know my writing does not fit in; it irks and troubles all my neighbors in this country full of smiles.” Chinese novelist Yan Lianke discusses the dream of writing uninhibited in a heavily censored country. (Nation)
The longlist for the 2015 Man Booker Prize has been announced. The £50,000 award is given to the best novel of the year published in English. Five out of the thirteen finalists are writers from the United States: Bill Clegg, Laila Lalami, Marilynne Robinson, Anne Tyler, and Hanya Yanagihara. The shortlist of six and the winner will be announced in September and October, respectively.
Riverhead Books has put out a call for submissions for a new anthology titled Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It, which will be comprised of essays about how Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2005 memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, inspired readers to go on adventures that changed their lives. Readers can submit their essays until July 31. (GalleyCat)
“In placing the routine next to the tragic, the sarcastic next to the reportage, Davis recreates a phenomenon that occurs daily on social media.” Adam Boffa argues that short story writer Lydia Davis’s work resembles the effects of social media and its celebration of the ordinary. (Millions)
At the Atlantic, novelist and short story author Mary-Beth Hughes discusses how the novels of Penelope Fitzgerald, and in particular, The Blue Flower, influenced her to embrace chance and focus on process over product in her writing practice.
And finally, a malicious use of Jane Austen’s words: Some computer hackers are using passages from Austen’s 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility to slip past antivirus software. Code that includes text from a literary classic, instead of nonsensical text, is deemed safe by computer screening systems. (Telegraph)
