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:

Hazlitt writers look back on their year [2]: Hanif Abdurraqib discusses a year of living alone [3]: “I am learning what it is to be responsible for your own warmth.” Tommy Pico reflects on a year of trying to write a screenplay [4] and releasing the tension in his life: “Day-to-day, a queer Native person leaping around this deeply stolen and homophobic land, I generally try to lessen the ambient tensions floating in my air.”

Barnes & Noble decided to keep its store in Daytona Beach, Florida, open after a class of third-graders wrote letters to the CEO of the chain [5] begging him not to close the store. (ABC Local 10 News)

At the New Yorker, Zadie Smith talks about her new story, “The Lazy River [6],” writing essays versus stories, and the tension between the “we” and “I.”

The Washington Post asks what “bad-sex novels can teach us in this bad-sex era [7]” and looks at the examples of Lucinda Rosenfeld’s What She Saw…, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey, and Michel Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles.

From a “Margarita Atwood” to a “Tequila Mockingbird,” Food & Wine considers the trend of literary-themed cocktails and drinks [8].

“She didn’t ask me to make the book about race, class, mental health, and gentrification without being about them; she wanted it all right at the center, where it belonged.” Naima Coster writes about navigating the publishing industry as a woman of color [9] and what it meant to work with Morgan Parker, an editor of color, on her debut novel, Halsey Street. (Catapult)

The Guardian profiles essayist and New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik [10], who discusses his family; his latest memoir, At the Stranger’s Gate; and how he deals with the criticism that his writing is privileged.