Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories.
Asako Serizawa has won the Story Prize Spotlight Award for her debut collection, Inheritors. The $1,000 prize honors “promising works by first-time authors, collections in alternative formats, or works that demonstrate an unusual perspective on the writer’s craft.” Meanwhile, the winner of the flagship Story Prize is due to be announced on March 10. The three finalists— Likes by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans, and The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw—were announced in January.
The Spare Zoom Project, sponsored by Penguin Random House UK, is helping demystify the publishing world by connecting job applicants with industry professionals for virtual conversations. Launched in November, the program has since facilitated over three hundred meetings. (Bookseller)
Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, and Macmillan have established new scholarships at the New York University School of Professional Studies Center for Publishing. (Publishers Weekly)
“The home that a gay bar could provide was as dysfunctional as any, and that’s the point: You’d participate in or observe constant tiny relational quandaries.” Jeremy Atherton Lin discusses weaving personal and researched histories in his debut, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out. (Electric Literature)
“Dust rises from each bag. Inside, family history dating back to the 1930s, in all its rusty brittleness.” Writer and artist Victor Ehikhamenor discovers a wealth of stories in his father’s old documents. (Guernica)
“I was trying to write something that is on the inside of your head that is almost before language.” Patricia Lockwood talks to the New York Times about rendering atmosphere and grief in her first novel, No One Is Talking About This.
Book Riot recommends five books of poetry that employ documentary forms, including Coal Mountain Elementary by Mark Nowak and Public Figures by Jena Osman.
The Millions highlights four new books published this week, including The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund and Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov.
