My Life in Book Banning

The author of one of last year’s most challenged books confronts a campaign of threats, cyberattacks, and doxing in the post-truth era.
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Articles from Poet & Writers Magazine include material from the print edition plus exclusive online-only material.
The author of one of last year’s most challenged books confronts a campaign of threats, cyberattacks, and doxing in the post-truth era.
Seven Kitchens has cultivated a diverse roster of writers through the fifteen or so chapbooks it publishes each year, including through its eight chapbook series, each appealing to a different community.
Since 2020 #BookTok, the hashtag that represents the book-loving community on TikTok, has emerged as a powerful force.
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books including The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li and Togetherness by Wo Chan.
Banned Books Week raises awareness of the rise in attempts to remove titles from schools and public libraries through a series of special events to be held across the country starting on September 18.
Nita Wiggins describes writing and self-publishing Civil Rights Baby: My Story of Race, Sports, and Breaking Barriers in American Journalism, and an agent and a publicist add their perspectives and offer self-publishing advice.
The books editor of the Boston Globe on the shrinking of books coverage, social media and the role of the editor, and the need for higher pay for book critics.
The full archive of interviews with the professional writers, readers, and thinkers whose job is to start conversations about contemporary literature.
This collection of case studies in self-publishing offers independent authors advice, warnings, encouragement, and inspiration.
The author of What We Fed to the Manticore highlights five journals that published her stories, including the Minnesota Review and Ecotone.
A look at three new anthologies, including New Weathers: Poetics From the Naropa Archive, edited by Anne Waldman and Emma Gomis.
A special “unburnable” edition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was crafted to raise awareness about recent efforts to ban books from schools and libraries.
The editor of The Best Short Stories 2022: The O. Henry Prize Winners sees translation as a way of putting a language back in movement by allowing the currents of different languages to mix and blend.
Annie Hwang of Ayesha Pande Literary talks about community building, professional burnout, the questions writers should ask when querying agents, and the demanding work of advocating for diversity in publishing.
In The Furrows, Namwali Serpell draws readers into the roiling nature of grief in a powerful narrative that explores memory, loss, and Black identity without resting on what she calls the “meaningless platitude” that art promotes empathy.
Amy J. Wong and Andrew Fung Yip founded Matilija Lending Library to “reflect our people of color communities in the San Gabriel Valley, and build multiracial solidarity.”
The new editor of Poetry shares his aspirations for shaping the 110-year-old magazine to reflect an expansive literary landscape.
“I was surprised by my own tendency to write longer and longer lines and to frequently slip into prose poems.” —Nina Mingya Powles, author of Magnolia 木蘭
The author of Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation offers a psychoanalytic approach to imagining the reader.
“If you can surprise a reader with a character’s reaction, a scene will almost always work.” —Megan Giddings, author of The Women Could Fly
“Writing, I now believe, is both a confidence trick and an alchemical process.” —Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different
Seven poets and writers are among the class of 2022 Disability Futures fellows.
“I needed to live all of the change and movement and multiplicity that the book wound up being about in order to write it.” —Caylin Capra-Thomas, author of Iguana Iguana
The author of Took House explores what happens when poets permit themselves to write about the same subject multiple times.
“A reader who truly needs these stories might not come to them for weeks, months, or even years.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional