Article Archive: News and Trends

Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.

Literary MagNet

by
Kevin Larimer
1.1.07

Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features Oxford American, the Believer, Wholphin, McSweeney's, Rattapallax, the Reader, and Poetry Kanto.

U.K. Imprint Attracts Debut Authors

by
Neil Baker
1.1.07

Michael Stephen Fuchs doesn't seem particularly naive or susceptible to exploitation. The fast-talking writer has a successful day job as an Internet consultant, peppers his conversation with literary aphorisms, and, like many debut authors, can talk with an eloquence borne from personal experience about the iniquities of the publishing business. But according to some in the book trade, Fuchs has been suckered.

What About Franz?

by
Ken Gordon
11.1.06
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Taking cues from Letters to a Young Poet, published more than seventy years ago, the Letters to Poets project puts an updated spin on Rilke’s experiment in mentorship with organized correspondence between two distinct types of poets.

Four Memoirists Find an I in Team

by
Anna Mantzaris
11.1.06

Last year a total of 172,000 books were published in the United States. Although that number reflects a 10 percent decrease from the previous year, it's easy to see how any one book could get lost in the shuffle—especially if it's one among the many memoirs being published every season. With the idea that there's strength in numbers, four memoirists who published books earlier this year have joined forces to promote their titles, developing a community of like-minded authors—and fostering emerging writers—along the way.

Indie Bookstores Face Uphill Battle

by
Kevin Smokler
11.1.06

When fiction writer Barry Eisler heard last summer that Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, California, would close after fifty years in business, his first reaction was a loud expletive. His second was an e-mail to owner Clark Kepler with an offer to help. "I used to see those big author photos in the window…and I was working on what would become my first novel," says Eisler, the author of the Jain Rain series of thrillers. "My fantasies of literary success were all based on doing book signings at Kepler's."

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Literary MagNet

by
Kevin Larimer
9.1.06

Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features the Paris Review, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the Iowa Review, and Speakeasy.

More to the Story: Peter Carey

by
Peter Carey
7.1.06

For the second installment of this occassional feature, in which we ask authors to list the movies, music, artwork, and books that inspired them during the course of writing their new books, we asked two-time Booker Prize–winning author Peter Carey, whose ninth novel was published by Knopf in May, for his list; he replied with this essay.

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