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:
Celebrate Women in Translation month with this list of thirty-one books by women in translation to read now. (Words Without Borders)
“Switching languages is a way to shed your skin.” Poet and novelist Idra Novey speaks with the Guardian about translation and her poetic approach to writing her first novel, Ways to Disappear.
VIDA: Women in Literary Arts hosts a roundtable discussion with editors from several literary publications, in which they discuss solicitation, the problematic rhetoric of publishing, and how their work as editors reflects VIDA’s mission of increasing critical attention to writing by women and marginalized voices.
Speaking of editors, David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker since 1998, speaks with PBS NewsHour about the editorial process and how the magazine has changed over the years.
A new publishing venture called Serial Box “blend[s] nineteenth century serial publishing with twenty-first century TV script writing” to bring books to readers in installments, or “episodes.” (Chicago Tribune)
“It’s still a struggle to excise myself from the tyranny of ‘precise’ linguistics, but as a poet, I’m finding it increasingly more interesting to do so.” At the Kenyon Review, award-winning poet Safiya Sinclair discusses the intentionality of language in her work, and interrogating the fragmentation of the self in her forthcoming collection, Cannibal.
Meanwhile, novelist Yaa Gyasi speaks with the Daily Show’s Trevor Noah about her acclaimed debut novel, Homegoing, and examining the effects of slavery over two centuries, across two continents. “We shouldn’t have to travel to Ghana and visit this castle in order to have this history be more readily available.”
“Oliver’s greatest gift was sensitivity—seeing, feeling, and sketching what the rest of us had never even noticed.” Doctor Orrin Devinsky reflects on his friendship with writer and psychologist Oliver Sacks, who died a year ago. (New Yorker)
