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:
“That’s also partly the project of this book. Trying to squint in an unimaginable future via the imagination—a hard future, potentially unlivable for our species. Trying to be a soul who can do that and still love life, still attend to beauty, still live out the days as if they were still…days. Not just days moving towards catastrophe—though one must look that in the eye in order to act. But also just days. We still have them. We have to live them. Honor them.” Jorie Graham talks about her latest book, Fast, and how to live in a time of environmental crisis.
Women swept nearly every category of the Hugo Awards, which were announced over the weekend. N. K. Jemisin won the best novel award for the second year in a row, taking home the 2017 prize for The Obelisk Gate. The awards are given annually for books of science fiction and fantasy. (Verge)
NPD BookScan has released a list of the ten U.S. publishers that sold the most books in 2016. The list, which includes sales in both print and e-book formats, is topped by the Big Five publishers and also includes Scholastic Books, Disney, and Workman. (Publishers Weekly)
Lindsay Hunter talks about writing unreliable narrators, her love of “the grotesque nature of human beings,” and her new novel, Eat Only When You’re Hungry. (New York Times)
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s childhood home is up for auction on eBay at a starting price of $400,000. The catch? The house is entirely disassembled and currently stored in two trailers and two storage containers. (Los Angeles Times)
Nathan Heller surveys recent books about political activism to ask: “Can protest be made great again? Or are the people simply raising their fists to the skies?” (New Yorker)
The Guardian pays novelist Hanya Yanagihara a visit at her one-bedroom apartment in New York City, which houses twelve thousand books, a jumble of art, and a bright pink wall.
The Denver Post reports on this year’s National Poetry Slam, which wrapped on Saturday. The inaugural six-day festival featured many events, including workshops, open mics, and a Haiku Death Match.
