Slideshows

Slideshows from Poets & Writers Magazine

Al-Mutanabbi Street Inventory Project

In 2010 San Francisco poet and bookseller Beau Beausoleil founded the Al-Mutanabbi Street Inventory Project to commemorate the 2007 bombing of Baghdad's famous bookselling thoroughfare, which left thirty people dead and the city's literary center devastated. Since then, Beausoleil has commissioned 261 artist books, created by artists from around the world to celebrate al-Mutanabbi Street and the resilience of the written word. This past March, a group of the books was selected for exhibition by the San Francisco Center for the Book; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, on display at the center until May 11, includes fifty-five artist books from the inventory. The images below represent just a few of the works currently on display.

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The Nantucket Book Festival

For the opener of The Spring 2013 Guide to Inspired Writing Retreats, contributing editor Jeremiah Chamberlin traveled to Nantucket to get a feeling for an exciting new book festival that is growing on a beautiful island known primarily as a summer playground.

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The Revolution: Report From Literary Egypt

For his article "The Revolution: Report From Literary Egypt," contributing editor Stephen Morison Jr, who lives in Madaba-Manja, Jordan, traveled to Cairo twice—first in late August 2012 and again in early October—and spoke with writers, publishers, and booksellers about the Arab Spring of 2011, freedom of expression and censorship, and the ongoing protests of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in the city's Tahrir Square.

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Cozy Classics for Young and Old

Brothers Jack and Holman Wang teamed up in 2012 to create Cozy Classics, an infant primer board-book series that adapts classic novels into twelve simple, child-friendly words that appear alongside photographs of handmade figurines. The brothers create the characters, sets, and props themselves through the painstaking process of needle-felting, a handcraft that involves the shaping of woolen fibers with a barbed needle. Each figure takes between eighteen and twenty-five hours to create. The first two titles—Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice—were released this past November by Vancouver-based Simply Read Books; the next release, a cozy take on Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, is forthcoming in April.

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The Architecture of Building Stories

Chris Ware's newest graphic novel, Building Stories, published by Pantheon in October, is actually fourteen discreet books, booklets, magazines, newspapers, and pamphlets, all contained in printed box. More than ten years in the making, the work imagines the inhabitants of a three-story Chicago apartment building, including the protagonist, a thirtysomething woman who has yet to find someone with whom to spend the rest of her life; a couple who can hardly bear to be in each other’s company; and the elderly landlady who has lived alone for decades.

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The Dark Room Collective, Then and Now

The Dark Room Collective, a community of black writers founded twenty-five years ago in Boston by poets Thomas Sayers Ellis and Sharan Strange and musician Janice Lowe, regroups this year for the Nothing Personal reunion tour. This slideshow offers a look at the early days of the DRC as well as a glimpse of the poets today.

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The Literature of Action

As a companion to "Poetic People Power" by Rebecca Keith, here's a look at classic and contemporary books that investigate social and political themes through poetry and prose. Help us add to this visual library by sending your suggestions to editor@pw.org.

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Middle Eastern Rhythms: Report From Literary Jordan

For his article "Middle Eastern Rhythms: Report From Literary Jordan," contributing editor Stephen Morison Jr., who lives in Madaba-Manja, Jordan, spoke with a number of authors and editors in the capital city of Amman during the aftermath of the Arab Spring. What he discovered was a literary community complicated by differing religious, political, and artistic beliefs. From the words of author and editor Basma Al Nsour, who censors herself not because of the government but rather to avoid embarrassing her tribe, to those of poet Nourredin Zuhair, who says he hates America and describes a world of cabals and conspiracies hemming him in from all directions, Morison offers a fascinating firsthand account of a changing country.

Morison has previously reported on the literary communities of Afghanistan, China, Myanmar, Vietnam, and North Korea for Poets & Writers Magazine.

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The Library as Incubator Project

A collection of art, writing, performances, and workshops that have taken place in or been inspired by libraries, as featured in the Library as Incubator Project, a website that connects writers, artists, and libraries from all over the world.

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Ampersands in the World

The ampersand has survived from ancient origins to the present day, where its usage is ubiquitous, and stylistically varied. In this slideshow, we train our lenses on the logogram's incarnations in everyday life. You can help add to our exhibit by sending photos of the curious character to ampersand@pw.org.

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