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:
Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul died on Saturday at the age of eighty-five. Naipaul wrote more than a dozen novels, many of which addressed colonialism and migration. He was “compared in his lifetime to Conrad, Dickens, and Tolstoy” but was also a “lightning rod for criticism, particularly by those who read his portrayals of third-world disarray as apologies for colonialism.” (New York Times)
Several critics have penned remembrances of Naipaul and his complicated legacy. Amit Chaudhuri writes, “That his impact as a formal innovator was greater and more crucial than almost any of his contemporaries’ is something we’re just beginning to understand, because none of us yet have the critical language with which to think of a brown man in that way….” James Wood remembers Naipaul’s “double vision, moving between colonial rim and colonial center, between empathy and shame, pride and humiliation….” (Guardian, New Yorker)
With the rise of Amazon and its own declining sales, Barnes & Noble is in trouble. The New York Times takes a closer look at the company’s leadership.
“The face of poetry in the United States looks very different today than it did even a decade ago, and far more like the demographics of Millennial America.” The Atlantic describes how poets like Chen Chen, Layli Long Soldier, and Aziza Barnes are changing contemporary poetry.
A lawyer is organizing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the authors affected by the embezzlement scandal at literary agency Donadio & Olson. Last month the bookkeeper of the agency pled guilty to embezzling more than $3.3 million. (Publishers Weekly)
David Joy talks with NPR about his new novel, The Line That Held Us, and how rural working-class people are depicted in fiction.
Do I need to go to grad school to be successful as a writer? Kate Zambreno, Edmund White, Rita D. Costello, Christopher Bollen, and Jessica Hopper offer advice. (Creative Independent)
“To read him now is to discover a sharper vision of the world, a higher ecological standard, and a sense of the inherent spirituality of life.” Seán Hewitt revisits the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
