Article Archive: News and Trends

Poetry in America, the 2006 report released by the Poetry Foundation, has spurred efforts to revitalize an interest in poetry among the general population, and in doing so, has also sparked a debate among those in the literary community.

As marketing director of Copper Canyon Press, the thirty-four-year-old independent publisher of poetry in Port Townsend, Washington, I am required to read a lot. While most of the titles on my reading list are poetry collections, I recently read two nonfiction texts that got me thinking about the "economics" of creative writing.

Two years after the failure of Zoo Press's fiction contests in 2004, founder Neil Azevedo responds about more controversy surrounding its poetry contests.

Sadly, recent revelations are forcing readers—confronted by a brand-new band of literary scallywags, hucksters, and hoaxers—to reconsider the veracity of the story as well as that of the storyteller.

For this inaugural installment of More to the Story—an occasional 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 A.M. Homes about her fifth novel,This Book Will Save Your Life, which was published by Viking last month.

In response to its 2004 report "Reading at Risk," which found that significantly fewer people read serious literature now than in years past, the National Endowment for the Arts recently launched an ambitious program designed to reverse the trend.

Among the many poetry collections that have been published in the weeks leading up to National Poetry Month, Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man, a collaborative book of sestinas by James Cummins and David Lehman released by Soft Skull Press in February, features perhaps the most prestigious and, simultaneously, zany cast of characters to appear in a book of poems since Alan Kaufman's Outlaw Bible of American Poetry was published by Thunder's Mouth Press seven years ago.

It used to be that when a writer bestowed human qualities on an animal—the ability to speak, for instance—it almost always meant trouble. Today, animal lit is broader in scope and occasionally even benevolent in nature.

On the eve of her departure from Somerville, Massachusetts, for Iowa City, Lan Samantha Chang spoke about her new role as the leader of the country's oldest creative writing program.

Can political fiction matter? Stephen Elliott, the editor of Politically Inspired, an anthology published by MacAdam/Cage in 2003, and its follow-up, Stumbling and Raging: More Politically Inspired Fiction, published by MacAdam/Cage this month, casts his vote in the “definitely yes” column.

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, A Public Space, lyric, Saranac Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Red River Review, the Canary, and River Styx.

Small Press Points highlights the happenings of the small press players. This issue features Action Books, Fence Books, Verse Press, Wave Books, Tin House Books, Bloomsbury USA, Twisted Spoon Press, and White Pine Press.