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:
“Language is such a complicated and fraught thing for immigrants and children of immigrants—a thing of multiple layers and immensities, both linguistic and emotional—perhaps it makes me sensitive to the ways in which we each have our own private language in addition to our other shared languages.” Poet Jennifer S. Cheng talks with Vi Khi Nao [2] about poetry, language, and family. (BLARB)
Amazon Publishing has launched a new imprint, Amazon Original Stories [3], which will publish short fiction and essays that can be read in a single sitting. The imprint’s first titles include fiction by Joyce Carol Oates and nonfiction by Colin Warner and Carl King. (Publishers Weekly)
As we head towards a new year, the Review Review offers “eight reasons your submission strategy sucks [4]” and what you can do about it.
“2017 was the year that the very concept of a best-seller became even more dubious.” At Slate, Laura Miller considers the lack of breakout best-sellers in 2017 [5] and the modest success of “dark-horse hits” such as J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow.
A year after journalist Claudio Gatti controversially outed pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante as the Rome-based translator Anita Raja, Ferrante is writing again [6]. Ferrante, who says her anonymity is crucial to her work, is apparently working on a new book and a screenplay for the film adaptation of her Neapolitan novels. (Guardian)
Despite the efforts of preservationists, James Baldwin’s former home in France will be demolished [7] and replaced by a luxury apartment complex that will open in June. (New York Times)
Entropy kicks off its “Best of 2017” lists with a roundup of best poetry collections from the year [8].
Dictionary.com has announced its word of the year: complicit [9]. Searches for the word spiked after a Saturday Night Live skit about Ivanka Trump in March. (Los Angeles Times)