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.
Yale University has named the recipients of the 2019 Windham-Campbell Prizes, which recognize English-language writers for their literary achievement or promise. This year’s eight honorees, who include essayist Rebecca Solnit and playwright Young Jean Lee, will each receive $165,000 to support their work.
Meanwhile, the seventeen winners of this year’s American Academy of Arts and Letters literature awards have been announced. The awardees include poets Marilyn Chin and D. A. Powell, and debut novelist Tommy Orange.
“The hypocrites in charge, not a one of whom I know, say they are doing this to ‘honor’ me.” A candid letter from Harper Lee bemoaning her hometown’s attempt to turn her into a tourist attraction has sold at auction for £19,158 (approximately $25,234). (Guardian)
Facing new criticism for misinformation available on the platform, Amazon has pulled two books touting debunked autism “cures” from its site. (CNBC)
The editor who brought Harry Potter to the United States is starting his own independent press. Arthur A. Levine, who has worked at Scholastic for twenty-three years and founded an eponymous imprint there in 1996, will launch his new venture in 2020, with a debut list of twenty U.S. titles and five books in translation. (Publishers Weekly)
“I found his chapter ‘Who to Bribe and How Much to Pay Them’ a little dry.” Online critics are having a field day reviewing the “getting into college” advice books of Rick Singer, who has plead guilty in federal court to illegal activities in securing places at prestigious universities for the children of wealthy clients. (Washington Post)
The National Book Foundation has named its twenty-five judges for this year’s National Book Awards, which are now open for submissions. The award longlist of fifty books across all five categories will be announced in mid-September.
“There are certain abuses, rare enough in poetry, that are commonplace in works of fiction. A person who reads and writes poetry all the time will perhaps see these abuses more clearly than the practitioner of fiction, who is naturally and understandably accustomed to them.” At the Paris Review, Anthony Madrid presents a poet’s complaint against fiction.
