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“Reading really saved my life in a way that people probably will never be able to understand.” Anthony Ray Hinton, author of the memoir, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (St. Martin’s Press, 2018), speaks about starting the only known book club on death row and the power of reading.
Leadership changes at Penguin Random House; Khadija Abdalla Bajaber wins inaugural Graywolf Press Africa Prize; an unconventional bookshop in a knitting factory; and other news.
The editor of Black Renaissance Noire on the importance of publishing new and emerging writers.
In 1964, the memoirist, novelist, and biographer James Lord sat for a portrait for the artist Alberto Giacometti. The painting session was intended to take only a few hours, but lasted weeks and became the inspiration for Lord’s book A Giacometti Portrait (Doubleday, 1965). In this film adaptation of the book, The Final Portrait, written and directed by Stanley Tucci, Armie Hammer stars as Lord with Geoffrey Rush as Giacometti.
Anelise Chen defines autofiction; Twitter accounts that impersonate writers; the most well-preserved section of the Iliad; and other news.
“One Life: Sylvia Plath,” an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., features a selection of the poet’s manuscripts, journals, clothing, and other personal objects, including a typewriter and even a lock of her hair, as well as numerous pieces of Plath’s artwork: collages, drawings, self-portraits, and photographs. The museum also incorporates other types of art and interdisciplinary projects into its Plath programming, such as “I Am Vertical,” a dance performed in December in the museum’s courtyard, created by choreographer-in-residence Dana Tai Soon Burgess and named after one of Plath’s poems. Envision how your own life and work as a writer might be presented in an art museum, and write a lyric essay about this hypothetical exhibit. What objects would be on display? Which e-mails or photographs would help tell your stories? Consider using different forms and conventions, such as lists and fragments.
Joan Silber Wins PEN/Faulkner Award; Chinese government cracks down on Hong Kong booksellers; women on male authors describing women; and other news.
“Literature is more of a community effort than most people realize.” Alexander Chee talks about how the essays came together for his first collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays (Mariner Books, 2018), with Rich Fahle of PBS Books at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa.
The “literary heart of America” is in Virginia; Barnes & Noble launches book app; Weike Wang wins PEN/Hemingway Award; and other news.
Fifty new writers to watch; Elizabeth Ebert, the “grand dame of cowboy poetry,” has died; NPR’s Twitter poetry challenge; and other news.
