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:
Northwestern University has received a $10 million gift to start a joint MFA-MA program. Directed by Reginald Gibbons, the program will begin enrolling students in Fall 2018. (Northwestern Now)
The National Book Foundation has announced the longlist for its 2017 award in nonfiction. The longlists in poetry and young adult literature were announced earlier this week; the fiction longlist will be announced tomorrow.
Kirkus Media, the company that publishes Kirkus Reviews, has launched a new book service, Kirkus Collections, which works to address the lack of diversity in books for children and young adults by curating lists of books that speak to underrepresented groups. (Fast Company)
“Poetry will always be anti-capitalist because it’s waste, and that’s what we love about it. It’s about looking for things that don’t have to have a direct use.” Eileen Myles talks with Rolling Stone about poetry, the Trump administration, and nostalgia for New York City in the seventies and eighties.
Mark Warren, the executive editor at Esquire, has been named the vice president and executive editor of Little Random, a Random House nonfiction imprint focused on politics and history. (Publishers Weekly)
“But for any serious reader of fiction in this country, the Americanization of the Booker Prize is a lost opportunity to learn about great books that haven’t already been widely heralded.” Ron Charles argues that the Booker Prize, since relaxing its eligibility rules in 2014 to include Americans, has become too American. Half of the shortlisted writers for the 2017 prize, who were announced yesterday, are American. (Washington Post)
Salon talks with Holly Goddard Jones, Celeste Ng, Eleanor Henderson, Chelsea Martin, and Gabriel Tallent about their new books.
Ng, Henderson, and Tallent are also featured in the latest installation of Page One, Poets & Writers Magazine’s column on new and noteworthy books.
Amazon took down hundreds of user reviews of Hillary Clinton’s new memoir about the 2016 election, What Happened, which came out on Tuesday. By Wednesday, the book had more than 1,500 reviews on Amazon, the majority of which were written by reviewers who had not actually purchased the book. (Guardian)
