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:
At the New York Times, fiction writers George Saunders and Jennifer Egan talk about envisioning the future through their writing versus writing about the past. “There are some parallels between writing about the future and writing about the past,” says Saunders. “Neither interests me at all, if the intention is just to ‘get it right.’ It’s nearly impossible to recreate a past mind-set, and also, why bother? That mind-set already existed, if you see what I mean. The goal of a work of fiction is, in my view, to say something, about how life is for us, not at any particular historical moment (past or present or future) but at every single moment.”
Agatha Christie’s 1930 short story collection, The Mysterious Mr. Quin, has been given new life in the form of an app. A contemporary adaptation of Christie’s stories unfolds in real time in the newly released Mr. Quin app, through which users can follow the stories by clicking on characters’ social media pages. (London Evening Standard)
The Brontë Society has acquired an unpublished short story by Charlotte Brontë, which was discovered inside of a book owned by the novelist’s mother. (Guardian)
A new museum celebrating the life and work of nineteenth-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud has opened in the poet’s hometown of Charleville-Mézières, France. Le Musée Rimbaud is housed in a seventeenth-century water mill and features manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and other artists’ writings about the poet. (RFI)
“Only the process matters. I have no skepticism about that.” At the Millions, fiction writer Rick Moody discusses his writing process, unreliable narrators, and his new novel, Hotels of North America, out this month from Little, Brown.
At the Globe and Mail, writer Tom Hawthorn remembers late best-selling Canadian author Frank White, who published his first book—the memoir Milk Spills and One-Log Loads (Harbour, 2013)—at age ninety-nine. White died last month at age 101.
Faber & Faber has announced it will close its sales distribution service for independent publishers—Faber Factory Plus—next year. The publisher’s clients include Daunt Books, Pavilion Books, Pushkin Press, among others. Stephen Page, Faber’s chief executive officer, cited the company’s operating losses in the previous year as the reason for closing the sales service. (Bookseller)
