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:
“I am also a person who’s really interested in voices in my writing, and I feel that especially when I’m stuck, that I need to be around a lot of people and just listen to them. So I think the solitude I like is the kind that’s really abundant in the city, which is that you are alone, but you are around a lot of people. That’s kind of my sweet spot of solitude, when nobody’s asking anything of me, but I can still be nosy.” Angela Flournoy discusses with Leslie Jamison and Katherine Towler the question of whether writers need to be alone to thrive. (Literary Hub)
In light of yesterday’s Brexit vote—the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union—Neill Denny, the editor of the London-based publishing-news website BookBrunch, predicts the U.K. economy, and publishing industry, will suffer. (Publishers Weekly)
Speaking of Brexit, authors voice their concerns about the decision. Neil Gaiman tweeted, “Dear UK, good luck. I am afraid you are going to need it…” and J. K. Rowling tweeted, “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted magic more.” (GalleyCat, Time)
“Extraordinary sentences, flashes of fresh perception, a carefully constructed edifice with deep meaning.” Fiction writer Annie Proulx considers what moves her in a work of literature. (New York Times)
The Asian American Writers’ Workshop has announced that Chris Jackson, the publisher and editor in chief of One World—an imprint at Random House with a multicultural focus—will receive the AAWW’s second annual Editorial Achievement Award. The award is given to editors who “incubate and publish excellent writers of color and help correct inequities of race, class, and gender in literature.”
“Rich’s refusal to be an archetype of femininity made her an archetype of feminism, a courageous trade but one that confronted her with aesthetic challenges virtually unprecedented in American poetry.” At the New Yorker, Dan Chiasson profiles Adrienne Rich, whose Collected Poems: 1950–2012 was released this month by Norton.
BookRiot chronicles the stories behind the names of several literary presses, including Tin House Books (named after the actual tin house the managing editor lived in) and Penguin Books (the result of founder Allen Lane’s search for a “dignified but flippant” logo for his press).
“We are socialized as a culture to be silent. So one of the things for me personally—even before I became a writer—was to ask, ‘Why aren’t we talking about this?’” Nicole Dennis-Benn talks about the social climate in her home country, Jamaica, and her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun. (Chicago Tribune)
