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:
Novelist Shannon Cain is leading an attempt to save the former home of writer James Baldwin from being developed into luxury apartments. Baldwin lived in the house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, from 1970 to his death in 1987. (Guardian)
In 1927 Zora Neale Hurston met Langston Hughes in Mobile, Alabama. The pair then drove through the American South together, embarking on a “halcyon journey of friendship, bonhomie, adventure, and intellectual challenge.” (Oxford American)
Today marks the twentieth anniversary Junot Díaz’s best-selling short story collection Drown. To kick off the anniversary celebration, Drown’s publisher Riverhead Books asked readers what the book meant to them, and published several responses on its Tumblr page.
At the Times Literary Supplement, Galya Diment investigates Vladimir Nabokov’s medical history and suggests the author suffered from epileptic seizures, which may have influenced his writing.
Following a coup attempt last month in Turkey, the Turkish government shut down twenty-nine publishing houses. The international publishing community, including the Turkish Publishers Association and PEN International, has condemned the closures and warned that this government move has a “grave impact on democracy.” (Guardian)
Seventy-two years after the publication of Anne Frank’s Holocaust diary, a writer looks at the various ways authors have incorporated the figure of Anne Frank into their fiction. (Signature)
The Japan Fair Trade Commission, Japan’s anti-monopoly watchdog agency, recently raided Amazon Japan’s offices on suspicion that the e-tailer required vendors to favor its e-commerce sites over rival sites. The results of the raid have not been disclosed. (Nikkei Asian Review)
In the latest author death hoax news, it has been confirmed that best-selling author Haruki Murakami is alive and well. Shortly after the news of Murakami’s supposed death spread on Twitter, Knopf confirmed it as a hoax created by the same Italian journalist who started the rumor of Cormac McCarthy’s death in June. (Entertainment Weekly)
