The Written Image: Last Night's Reading

In her new book, illustrator Kate Gavino—author of the popular Last Night’s Reading blog—brings hundreds of literary readings to life by pairing illustrations of authors with selected quotes from each event.
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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
In her new book, illustrator Kate Gavino—author of the popular Last Night’s Reading blog—brings hundreds of literary readings to life by pairing illustrations of authors with selected quotes from each event.
Alaska’s Fiddling Poet, who over the past twenty years has been playing his fiddle and reading poems for audiences across the country, talks about how he has built a career—and a life—out of touring and sharing his music and poetry with others.
Start your MFA research with this comprehensive guide to more than 170 full- and low-residency programs in creative writing, expanded and updated for 2016. Each listing includes detailed information such as core faculty, special features, funding, tuition, application fees, and deadlines. The free PDF also includes a regional index, a cost-of-living comparision, and a handy Application Tracker to keep track of your applications.
Iconic author David Foster Wallace is the subject of the recently released film The End of the Tour, in which actor Jason Segel stars as Wallace. The film is an adaptation of David Lipsky’s Of Course You End up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, which chronicles Lipsky and Wallace’s 1996 road trip during Wallace’s promotional tour for Infinite Jest.
Supporting local bookstores may have just gotten a little easier. A new digital tool called CityShelf allows users to search the shelves of independent bookstores in select cities throughout the country from their mobile devices.
Small Press Points highlights the innovation and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features the Bangkok, Thailand–based Bleeding Heart Publications. Established last year by Scottish ex-pat Gordon Ross and U.S. writer Cali Dawson, the press is committed to publishing fiction and nonfiction from English-language writers from all over the world.
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 Table Talk, Black Clock, Huizache, Bitter Oleander, and American Chordata.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Jonathan Franzen’s Purity and Salman Rushdie’s Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
Joshua Wolf Shenk, the new executive director of the Black Mountain Institute (BMI)—an international literary center that supports writers whose work addresses political and cultural issues—discusses BMI’s role in the culture of creative writing and what he plans to bring to the organization.
The Bridge, an online forum launched by the literary nonprofit Brooklyn Poets, fosters connections between emerging and established writers, and provides a student-mentor alternative to the traditional MFA program.
Isaac Fitzgerald, editor of BuzzFeed Books, talks about the growth of the site’s book review section, what a typical day in the BuzzFeed office looks like, and how the Internet has changed the discourse around books.
Last month, the City University of Hong Kong’s highly respected MFA writing program abruptly shut down. Joanna Scutts investigates the program’s sudden closure, which has prompted protests and political speculations from students and faculty around the world.
Warren Wilson College’s low-residency MFA program is taking strides to address questions of diversity, having started a conversation among faculty and students about the intersection of race, culture, and craft in the MFA landscape.
Dawn Davis—vice president and publisher of 37 INK, an imprint of Simon & Schuster’s Atria Publishing Group—talks about editing Edward P. Jones, the lack of diversity in publishing, and what some of the most successful authors have in common.
Her books, for readers of all ages, have been published in thirty-two languages and sold more than eighty-five million copies worldwide, but Judy Blume, whose new novel, In the Unlikely Event, was published by Knopf in June, has always taken a simple approach to her work: “I do what I have to do to tell the story.”
Since its founding in 2008, Badilisha Poetry X-Change has built the largest online archive of contemporary African poetry, including work by nearly four hundred poets from more than thirty countries across Africa and the diaspora. Now, with the launch of a new mobile site, Badilisha is making African poetry more accessible and interactive to millions of Africans.
Clayton Smith has self-published several books, including his latest novel, Apocalypticon, and used his experiences to cofound Dapper Press, a company that provides essential services like editing, design, and promotion to self-published authors. Editor Kim Bookless and publicist Lissy Peace weigh in on Smith’s process, and such self-publishing necessities.
In an effort to open writing contests and grants to undocumented immigrants, a group called the “Undocupoets” successfully petitions some of the most prominent presses and literary organizations in America.
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 Southern Review, the Pinch, Zyzzyva, Hanging Loose, and Copper Nickel.
With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Nick Flynn’s My Feelings and Rebecca Makkai’s Music for Wartime, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.
Three poets laureate—Luis J. Rodriguez, Joseph Bathanti, and Natasha Trethewey—talk about the various initiatives and influences they've brought to the position, and what the role means to them.
Four young literary agents meet for an evening of food, drink, and conversation about how they find new authors, what they need to see in a query letter, and the common mistakes writers should avoid.
Jennifer Day, the editor of the Chicago Tribune’s Sunday books section, Printer’s Row Journal, discusses her commitment to assembling the best literary criticism on both the local and national level.
French artist Stéphane Heuet’s Herculean efforts to democratize the work of Marcel Proust come to fruition as Norton releases his graphic-novel adaptation of Swann’s Way.
InsideOut, a program that has been bringing poets to Detroit schools for twenty-five years, says goodbye to founder and executive director Terry Blackhawk this year, and will publish an anthology of essays by its educators in August.