PEN America Condemns Charlie Hebdo Attacks, VONA Workshop Moves to Miami, and More

by
Staff
1.8.15

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:

In response to yesterday’s deadly attacks at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, PEN American Center and organizations such as the Index on Censorship, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and others, have issued a call “on all those who believe in the fundamental right to freedom of expression to join in publishing the cartoons or covers of Charlie Hebdo on January 8 at 14:00 GMT.” PEN states that “only through solidarity—in showing that we truly defend all those who exercise their right to speak freely—can we defeat those who would use violence to silence free speech.” Yesterday, PEN issued a statement condemning the attacks.

After fifteen years in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), an organization that runs the only multi-genre workshop for writers of color in the country, has moved its core program to the University of Miami.  The VONA/Voices workshop was founded in 1999 by writers Elmaz Abinader, Junot Díaz, Victor Díaz, and Diem Jones.

Good news for independent bookstores: An informal survey of independent bookshops distributed by Publisher’s Weekly revealed a significant increase in sales over the past year.        

In more good print book news, British bookstore chain Waterstones saw an increase in print book sales over the holiday season, and now plans to open at least twelve more stores.  (GalleyCat)

The first ever National Readathon Day is approaching. The National Book Foundation, Penguin Random House, Goodreads, and Mashable have partnered in hosting the marathon reading session, which will take place January 24 from 12-4PM. Booksellers, libraries, and schools are encouraged to participate and to help raise funds for the National Book Foundation. (Goodreads)

At the Millions, Sarah Anne Johnson asks several authors to share the best piece of writing advice they have ever received.

What has “culture” become in our disrupted, digitized age? In an essay for the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Leon Wieseltier examines the current state of “humanism” and the “urgent task for American intellectuals and writers…to think critically about the salience, even the tyranny, of technology in individual and collective life.”