Jeffrey Eugenides's Advice to Young Writers, Working with Iraqi Poet Saadi Youssef, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
12.27.12

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 San Francisco Chronicle explains how Vermont poet Peter Money, with Sinan Antoon, worked together with Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef to translate Youssef's new collection Nostalgia, My Enemy.

PEN International protests the conviction of author Enoh Meyomesse in Cameroon. Meyomesse originally was charged with a coup attempt, but was sentenced to seven years in prison for theft. The author contends he was jailed for his writing and political beliefs.

Novelist Dennis Lehane's beagle, Tessa, jumped a backyard fence in Brookline, Massachusetts, and has gone missing. Lehane has promised to feature Tessa's rescuer in his next novel. (Atlantic Wire)

Mashable lists five new companies aiming to improve the experience of reading e-books.

Jeffrey Eugenides shared advice in a speech to ten young Whiting Award winners: "You write your first stuff pretty much for yourself, not thinking anybody will read, much less publish, it, not thinking it’ll earn money, therefore not worrying about pleasing anyone or falling in line with any agenda; not worrying about censoring yourself, either, because who’s going to see it? And, miraculously, it worked out." (New Yorker)

The Weekly Standard looks at the third and latest volume of T. S. Eliot's correspondence, which covers just two years of Eliot's life, from 1926–27.

The editors of Open Letters Monthly discuss their year in reading for 2012.

Meanwhile, continuing the march of year-end lists, Gary Belsky offers the "Hundred Best Lists of All Time," including William the Conqueror’s The Domesday Book, and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40. (New Yorker)