The Written Image: Walt Whitman
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass, the Washington Friends of Walt Whitman is cosponsoring a citywide festival from March 26 (the day of Whitman’s death) to May 31 (his birthday).
Article Archive: News and Trends
Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
The Tale of the 10 Cruelest Months
The Academy gears up to celebrate the 10th annual National Poetry Month in April—an event seen, depending on one’s perspective, as either a marketing bonanza or a wonderful excuse to bring poems into the public sphere.
Literary MagNet
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 Diner, the Massachusetts Review, Night Train, the Women’s Review of Books, DoubleTake, the Oxford American, and Cranky Literary Journal.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Copper Canyon Press, Shambhala Publications, Other Press, Suspect Thoughts Press, and Vernacular Press.
Don Quixote at 400
I am in the middle of Don Quixote—where many writers are and, according to Cervantes scholars, where every writer should be. I’m reading it because this year marks the 400th anniversary of its publication. I would like to say that I’ve finished it, but I cannot. The Quixote, as it is affectionately referred to by die-hard fans, is not something you finish. It’s something you rattle around in.
The Contester: Is There More to Contests Than Cash?
The standard recompense for winning a literary contest is typically one of the following: money, publication in a literary magazine or a book, and a certain amount of recognition, but some rather unusual awards are handed out each year that don’t fall within the usual “money plus publication” category.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth and Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil by C.D. Wright.
Q&A: Kooser's American Life in Poetry
Ted Kooser, appointed the 13th poet laureate of the United States last August, launches American Life in Poetry, a weekly newspaper column featuring a poem and a brief introduction, which is distributed free to any paper wishing to publish it.
The Contester: The Long and Short of Story Awards
Despite the numerous prestigious awards given to published short story authors, recent news of short fiction contest administrators and judges failing to choose a winner have left emerging writers wondering, "What about me?"
Kirkus Reviewed
The biweekly magazine Kirkus Reviews publishes pre-publication book reviews, offering professional opinions of approximately 5,000 titles per year. But the tables have turned on the 72-year-old publication as writers and publishers offer their own appraisals of its recent decision to charge money for some book reviews.
All's Fair in Poems About Love and War
Despite the fluctuating aesthetics and ideologies espoused by critics, professors, and practitioners of poetry, there remain two general subjects that consistently offer poets inspiration: love and war; but with walentine’s Day just around the corner, three new anthologies of love poems are offering readers a respite from verse about violence.
Google Ogles Print
The widely used online search engine Google recently launched a new feature that allows Web users to search within pages of published books.
Literary MagNet
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 Softblow, the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Poetry Billboard, the 2nd Rule, No Tell Motel, Boulevard, American Letters & Commentary, FIELD, Boston Review, Pleiades, Witness, and Gulf Stream.
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Calyx Books, Graywolf Press, and nthposition press.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer excerpts from Home Land by Sam Lipsyte and The Celestial Jukebox by Cynthia Shearer.
The Confessions of a Sestinas Editor
How did I become a sestinas editor? It all began with a rejection letter. “Thanks for sending,” it read, “but we’re looking for more traditional, iambic pentameter sestinas."
Small Press Points
Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Fish Publishing, Zygote Publishing, and Perugia Press.
Corgan's New Gig
Last month Faber and Faber published Blinking With Fists, the first book of poems by Billy Corgan, the singer and songwriter for the defunct rock band Smashing Pumpkins.
Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin
Page One features a sample of titles we think you'll want to explore. With this installment, we offer an excerpt from Torture the Artist by Joey Goebel.
Book Tours: Can Readings Be Fun?
Cindy Dach, the events and marketing manager of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, recently launched First Fiction Tour, a program that she hopes will heighten the public image of the first-time author. But it’s not what you might expect: She isn’t packing customers into the bookstore, she’s inviting them to the bar.
The Contester: Poetry.com Struggles for Legitimacy
No entry fee? Little chance of rejection? Any poet worth her iamb has reason to be suspicious. And, indeed, the International Library of Poetry and its affiliates—the International Society of Poets, Watermark Press, poetry.com, and so on appears on several Internet-based contest-scam watch lists. Still ILP education director Len Roberts argues that the organization has its purpose and is taking steps to redeem its reputation.
Grassroots Effort Saves Poetry Reviews
The industry trade magazine Publishers Weekly this summer decided to stop publishing its monthly Poetry Forecast section, an editorial move that would have had deleterious effects on independent publishers. In response to complaints from many publishers, editors, and poets, the decision was reversed a few weeks later, before any changes were made to the magazine.
Literary MagNet
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 Pindeldyboz, Grand Street, Verse, the Paris Review, Lilies & Cannonballs Review, and No: A Journal of the Arts.
A Contest Clinker
When New Rivers Press announced that Ron Rindo of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was a winner of the 2003 MVP Competition this past summer, some of the approximately six hundred entrants were perplexed. The guidelines stated that the contest, which awards three $1,000 prizes and the publication of three book-length manuscripts, was open to emerging poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. Rindo, who won for his short story collection Love in an Expanding Universe, had previously published two books, both with New Rivers Press.
The Inner Voices of Richard Howard
Richard Howard will turn 75 in October, the same month that Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish Inner Voices: Selected Poems 1963–2003 and Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965–2003, and he seems more eager than ever to share his unique perspectives.