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.
Today is World Book Day. Catalan expatriate Patricia Puentes will be celebrating the occasion, which is also the shared death-day of Shakespeare and Cervantes, the Barcelona way: with books and roses. (CNET)
In New York City, Melville House and the New York Public Library have launched the Climate Change Reading Group, which kicks off today with a session on environmental activism. (Publishers Weekly)
“The means of literary production and representation are out of the hands of any one writer, including myself, and that means we are subjected to all kinds of easy, sentimental, stereotypical ways of reading our work and our being, which includes that whole trope of being ‘the voice for the voiceless.’” Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and nonfiction author Viet Thanh Nguyen on the mechanism of representation. (Asymptote)
The fifth annual Independent Bookstore Day takes place this Saturday, with 580 booksellers from around the country participating in the festivities, which include author readings, raffles, and discounts. (Publishers Weekly)
“I’m definitely a headphones-on person in coffee shops, but sometimes I forget to even play music. I think part of me just likes the feeling of having headphones in; it’s like I’m preventing things from escaping out of my ears.” A day in the life of Jonny Sun, author-illustrator of the 2017 best-seller everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too. (New York Times)
At the time of his death, the musician and songwriter Prince was working on his memoir. Three years later, his publisher, Random House, has confirmed that The Beautiful Ones will be released on October 29. (Vulture)
At Los Angeles Review of Books, Maxim D. Shrayer remembers his last visit with Dmitri Nabokov—opera singer, literary translator, and son of Vladimir and Véra.
For National Poetry Month, Rigoberto González recommends eight collections by Latinx poets, including How to Love a Country by Richard Blanco and Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff by Sara Borjas. (NBC)
