Maria Popova on Dani Shapiro’s New Book, Emily Dickinson Archive, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
10.23.13

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:

Yesterday on Twitter, author and writing instructor Elizabeth McCracken dispensed sage advice to MFA applicants. (GalleyCat)

Dustin Kurtz reports that the government of Iran may relax its literary censorship. (Melville House)

“Poetry as we know it—sonnets or free verse on a printed page—feels akin to throwing pottery or weaving quilts, activities that continue in spite of their cultural marginality.” Kenneth Goldsmith considers the connections between Internet culture and current poetry. (New Yorker)

The Wall Street Journal wonders if recent Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro will end retirement.

Financed by Harvard, the Emily Dickinson Archive is now integrated and available online, providing Dickinson readers with a single website through which they can peruse manuscripts housed in multiple locations and libraries. (New York Times)

Shaun Usher explains to the Telegraph the reasons he launched the popular website Letters of Note.

Anna Holmes shares an exclusive excerpt from The Book of Jezebel, including a description of George Eliot, the pen name of Victorian author Mary Ann Evans. (Time)

Maria Popova looks at Dani Shapiro’s new book Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life, describing it as a “magnificent memoir of the writing life, at once disarmingly personal and brimming with widely resonant wisdom.” (Brain Pickings)