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.
Thirteen novels have been longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. Two-time Booker winner Hilary Mantel is in the running once again—this time for The Mirror and the Light. If selected for the £50,000 prize, she would be the first author to win three times. Alongside Mantel’s novel are four titles from other established authors, plus eight debut novels. (Guardian)
The thirty-second annual Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards ceremony was streamed online last Friday. Among the evening’s honorees, Tillie Walden’s Are You Listening? took home the 2020 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel. (Publishers Weekly)
“Many people, of all races and ethnicities, are saying it feels different this time. With George Floyd’s killing, white America has finally gotten its long-overdue wake-up call.” Richard Russo worries that white America will quickly revert to business as usual. He cites an old parable from a 1930 detective novel that might serve as a warning. (Atlantic)
“I don’t know how to comprehend a hundred thousand deaths, or three hundred and fifty thousand, or whatever obscene numbers are still to come. But I don’t want to stay numbed by the callous comfort of the abstraction.” Scott O’Connor reflects on the narratives contained within data. (Paris Review Daily)
“We have to build a social and cultural infrastructure where the things that we do also are giving us life—not just taking energy from us.” Musician, writer, and academic Martha Gonzalez discusses her memoir, Chican@ Artivistas, and how to seek sustained transformation. (Los Angeles Times)
“The landline is a source of suspense, of great and small action; it is the noise of the world entering almost supernaturally into a room.” Sophie Haigney mourns the decline of the landline telephone in life and in fiction, and analyzes how new technologies are changing contemporary narratives. (New Yorker)
Sara Borjas talks to Alta about the central question behind her work: “How do I decenter whiteness in my desires and begin to decolonize my life, starting with my love?”
By modifying a large tricycle, Cetonia Weston-Roy of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has created a mini-bookshop on wheels that centers Black narratives. (Shelf Awareness)
