Ann Patchett’s Bookstore Guide, Rebecca Solnit’s Political Manifesto, and More

by
Staff
12.8.16

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:

Following the election, an updated edition of Rebecca Solnit’s political manifesto, Hope in the Dark, originally published in 2004 in response to George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, has sold out in print in the United States and has upwards of 33,000 digital downloads so far. “History is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone,” Solnit stated two days after the election. (Guardian)

Best-selling author Ann Patchett, who owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, provides a guide to a number of notable independent bookstores around the country. (New York Times)

“Before I began this series of poems, I didn’t think of myself as a political writer.” Native American poet Layli Long Soldier discusses her forthcoming collection, WHEREAS, a project “examining the language of the U.S. government over the past two-hundred-forty years in its treaties and apologies to Native people—and the officiousness and duplicity that is contained in those documents.” (PBS NewsHour)

Fiction writer Tony Tulathimutte, author of the novel Private Citizens, considers why there isn’t a “voice of a generation” novel for Millennials, and why the idea of the generational novel minimizes individual experience. “The desire to universalize…and declare that any book speaks for everyone, ends up shortchanging both the novel and the generation.” (New York Times)

A new report has found that late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro acted as an unofficial copyeditor to novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez. (Guardian)

Fiction writer D. Foy discusses his new novel, Patricide, out now from Stalking Horse Press. “I began to consider the uber-matrix in which our fathers are molded. What is the father? How is it he’s become the figure of power and fear he is? What is patriarchy? How does the patriarchy maintain dominance and control, and how and why does its influence pervade every aspect of our society and culture?” (Believer)

Signature provides a month-by-month readers guide to the best books of 2016.