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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Graywolf Press, a 26-year-old literary nonprofit publisher based in St. Paul, has entered into a new distribution deal with New York publishing giant Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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.
Thirty-six years after his death, John Steinbeck—the Nobel Prize–winning author of American classics like The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden—is the focus of the largest-ever centenary celebration for a single author. Born in Salinas, California, on February 27, 1902, Steinbeck is being remembered with a yearlong program of over 175 events in 39 states.
The Great Books Foundation, which for more than 50 years has been reminding the public that a book replete with sophisticated ideas and a "good read" are not mutually exclusive, has brought that same philosophy to a new magazine. The Common Review aims to deliver the riches of intellectual engagement to a general reading audience.
The Academy of American Poets, the 68-year-old literary nonprofit, has made headlines recently, but not for its latest party or prizewinner. In September the organization, best known for founding National Poetry Month, announced that Executive Director William Wadsworth had been asked to resign by board of directors president Henry Reath. And on November 7, the board voted to lay off eight of the Academy's seventeen employees and to subdivide its new office and rent out half of the space, which the group had renovated and moved into in August.
In honor of poet Robert Bly's 75th birthday last month, the Minneapolis-based Loft Literary Center, in conjunction with the McKnight Foundation, revived Bly's innovative literary magazine—originally titled The Fifties, in honor of the decade in which it was founded—by publishing the first issue of The Thousands.
A number of literary magazines—APR, Fence, McSweeney's, Open City, Pearl, Pleiades, and Verse—have in recent years pursued book publishing ventures, usually ones that include an annual book contest. Putting an electronic twist on that trend is the bimonthly online literary magazine Slope. This spring, founding editor Ethan Paquin is making the jump from Web journal to print press by launching Slope Editions, which will publish two or three books of poetry annually.
