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:
Following yesterday’s announcement of Kazuo Ishiguro as the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, the BBC sits down with the English novelist. “The world is in a very uncertain moment and I would hope all the Nobel Prizes would be a force for something positive in the world as it is at the moment,” says Ishiguro. “I’ll be deeply moved if I could in some way be part of some sort of climate this year in contributing to some sort of positive atmosphere at a very uncertain time.”
At the Washington Post, Ron Charles considers the choice of Ishiguro as the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. “He’s popular but not pop, liberal but not a wacky communist, mature but not is-he-still-alive?” Charles writes. “He is, in other words, the kind of choice that makes us think the Swedes know what they’re doing.”
Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish musician and writer Leonard Cohen’s final book, The Flame, in October 2018. The book will include Cohen’s last poems, which he selected and ordered before his death in November 2016, as well as a selection of prose, illustrations, and lyrics. (New York Times)
Alexandra Kleeman on Twin Peaks, Nathan Englander on The Great British Baking Show—writers share their favorite cultural experiences of 2017. (New York Times Magazine)
Authors Lisa Yee, Mike Curato, and Mo Willems withdrew from their appearances in the Springfield Children’s Literature Festival at the Dr. Seuss museum in Massachusetts, after festival organizers refused to address their concerns about a Dr. Seuss mural that featured a racist caricature of a Chinese man. The festival has since been canceled, and the museum announced it would replace the mural. (Publishers Weekly)
“I’m beginning to understand that this country made me sick, and I, in trying to hide my pain, let it multiply.” Poet Wendy Xu writes about immigrating to the United States and learning to share with her family the hardships and racism she faces. (BuzzFeed Reader)
Amy Grace Loyd, the literary editor at Playboy from 2005 to 2011, shares what it was like publishing some of the most notable fiction writers of the day—Denis Johnson, Margaret Atwood, A. S. Byatt, Junot Díaz—while working at a magazine that “aimed to answer at once to carnality and intellectual curiosity, silliness and sophistication.” (Guardian)
Image, a journal of art and faith, will publish the never-before-seen college journal of Flannery O’Connor. (PR Web)
