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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
To coincide with National Poetry Month, the Library of America, a nonprofit publisher of American classics, will launch the American Poets Project, a new series of books devoted to individual poets and anthologies exploring particular themes, genres, and eras.
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 Rosebud, Pleiades, Fizgig, American Letters & Commentary, Shiny, Brevity, and Canary River Review.
Anthologies compiled annually by editors who scan diverse sources and publish the poems they deem “the best,” are quickly gaining popularity worldwide. The latest of these is an online publication called Best New Zealand Poems.
During the past year, poets laureate have been the unlikely recipients of national media attention. New Jersey's Amiri Baraka was excoriated for reading a poem that some labeled anti-Semitic, and California's Quincy Troupe resigned after inaccuracies were discovered on his resumé. With their public profiles growing, the role of poets laureate is being called into question. In April the nation's first conference for state poets laureate will convene in Manchester, New Hampshire, where they will discuss poetry and their responsibilities as public representatives of their art.
Careful storytelling, along with careful marketing, has helped American Lives—the memoir series at the University of Nebraska Press—attract the attention of talented authors, national reviewers, and bookstore sales reps.
Last spring I embarked on a modest project. Having photocopied 10 of my favorite poems—by poets living and dead, from several different countries—I stapled them into an anthology and stood on a sidewalk in Times Square, where I read the poems aloud. I had no other gimmicks and no amplification. I did this on several occasions, always bringing a friend along for moral support and to assist in handing out free copies of the anthology, which I titled "Antidote."
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 Verse, Fence, McSweeney's, Open City, Orchid, Two Lines, and the Missouri Review.
Naropa University has established the Naropa Audio Preservation and Access Project to archive the program's vast holdings of recorded readings, lectures, panel discussions, and workshops.
British novelist Hong Ying faces a "defamation of the dead" lawsuit in China for her book K: The Art of Love, a fictional portrayal of the love affair between Bloomsbury poet Julian Bell and the celebrated Chinese writer and painter Ling Shuhua.
After finishing About a Boy by Nick Hornby, a reader in New York City left it on a Starbucks magazine rack with hopes that someone would pick up the novel and read it. Two days later a reader from Delta, British Columbia, found the book, took it back to Canada, read it, and left it in the waiting room of a dentist's office, where it found its way into the hands of another local reader. The tracking of such a literary journey is made possible by a unique online book club called BookCrossing.com.
Two thousand years after it was destroyed by fire, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina—the mythic Egyptian library that at one time boasted a universal collection of everything ever written—as reopened to the public on October 16.
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 New Letters, Brick, The Ohio Review, 96 Inc, Poetry Review, Gloss, and Explorations.
Alice James Books has published about 130 books by an eclectic list of poets including Jane Kenyon, Fanny Howe, B.H. Fairchild, Timothy Liu, and Rita Gabis, and it will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a yearlong schedule of events in 2003.
Three new films based on books of fiction are scheduled to be released in October: Ethan Canin's The Palace Thief, Michael Cunningham's The Hours (which features an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Claire Danes, and Ed Harris), and Janet Fitch's White Oleander.
Black Sparrow Press, based in Santa Rosa, California, began in 1966 as a vehicle for John Martin to publish the work that he loved, but went on to become a financial success. It published more than 650 titles, with annual sales eventually rising to more than $1 million, which is why it came as a surprise to many in the publishing industry when Black Sparrow went out of business last spring.
Over three hundred poems, short stories, and essays written in response to the events of last September have been collected in three new anthologies: September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets, and 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11.
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 One Story, Chicago Review, Boston Review, Agni, Ploughshares, Poetry, Blackbird, and Creative Nonfiction.
A Word A Day: A Romp Through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words in English—a collection of 273 unusual, obscure, and exotic words inspired by Anu Garg's linguistic e-mail service, A.Word.A.Day—will be published by John Wiley & Sons in October.
Giving a public reading, for most writers, involves a good deal of anxiety, a powerful dose of pride in one's work, and the cool relief of getting through the experience without humiliation. Payment often comes in the form of applause. But for those writers whose names regularly appear on book jackets and prize announcements, public readings can mean big business—and big paychecks.
In January, National Geographic Books launched a series that offers a different kind of travel book—one that uses the unique perspective of a writer to explore the larger implications of place.
Writers, publishers, and bookstore owners who have profited a great deal from the success of Oprah's Book Club reeled from the announcement on April 5 that Oprah Winfrey had made her last monthly book club selection, for nothing else could elevate a book to the status of best-seller quite like it.
On April 1 Tree Swenson took up the post of executive director of the Academy of American Poets, the New York City–based membership organization responsible for founding National Poetry Month. Swenson succeeds William Wadsworth.
Public allegations of plagiarism are leveled at unsuspecting authors at least once a year, but their frequency doesn't diminish the calamitous results: bruised reputations, soured accusers, disenchanted readers, and riled media. This spectacle isn't, however, an invention of our media-saturated age. Public fascination with plagiarism is as old as our appetite for scandal.
This year the Poetry Society of America is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Poetry in Motion—the program that brings poems to subways and buses across the country. The 92-year-old literary nonprofit is printing newly designed posters, sponsoring a poetry contest, and hosting readings in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City.
Now that the explosive growth of the dot-com industry has abated, many are wondering if the same fate awaits electronic publishing. At the annual Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany, where a sober crowd gathered in October 2001, just weeks after the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., the Pollyannaish predictions of recent years about e-books were replaced by a more uncertain tone.
