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:
The Millay Society has started a fundraiser to save Steepletop, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s former farmhouse in Austerlitz, New York, which is facing closure unless $1 million is raised in operating costs. Steepletop is currently a museum and shares a property with the Millay Colony for the Arts residency program. (New York Times)
A book signed by the late Stephen Hawking in 1973, a year before he became paralyzed by ALS, is at auction this week with a starting bid of $28,000. (Live Science)
Four years ago Philadelphia resident Nina Schafer created the Unexpected Poetry Project, in which she distributes more than twelve thousand poems per year to people she interacts with throughout the city. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
Former FBI director James Comey’s memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week, three times the amount of first-week sales for Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. (The Hill)
Writers Edmund White and Roxane Gay will be honored at the 30th annual Lambda Literary Awards, which recognize the best LGBTQ books of the year. White will receive the Visionary Award, and Gay will receive the Trustee Award.
Palestinian author Ibrahim Nasrallah has won the $50,000 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel The Second War of the Dog.
Meanwhile, on Friday the Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners were announced in eleven categories. Patricia Smith won in poetry for Incendiary Art, Jenny Zhang won the in debut fiction for Sour Heart, and Mohsin Hamid won in fiction for Exit West.
