Article Archive: News and Trends

After collecting poetry books to lend to students, poet and educator Hiram Sims opened the Sims Poetry Library in Los Angeles. Today the library boasts a collection of over six thousand books and serves as a home base for poets in the community.

Writer Sophie Calle took a job as a maid at a Venice hotel to secretly study the lives of its guests. Her diary of observations and photos compose The Hotel, a book whose provocative methods have inspired other artists.

For one hundred years, PEN International has championed freedom of expression and the rights of writers. This fall, the organization considers its history with an online archive, a Centenary Congress, and a new book documenting their work.

The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books, including Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit and Such Color: New and Selected Poems by Tracy K. Smith.

Roxane Gay Books, a new imprint of Grove Atlantic, will publish three books a year in a variety of genres, with the author herself casting a wide net in terms of the submissions she’s seeking and dispensing with the usual requirements.

To recruit talented BIPOC professionals into literary agenting and ensure social justice in the field, Literary Agents of Change offers a paid internship program as well as a mentorship program focusing on retention.

In a new graphic novel, comic artist Theo Ellsworth adapts Jeff VanderMeer’s tale of a mysterious building where “office culture” connotes secret languages and unspoken rituals. 

Four new anthologies including The 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology: A Selection of the Shortlist and We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork From Grown-Up Readers.