Arthur Miller Archive, Now Read This Book Club, and More

by
Staff
1.10.18

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:

After a prolonged fight with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin has acquired Arthur Miller’s archive for $2.7 million. The archive includes eight thousand pages of private journals, in addition to 160 boxes of manuscripts and other papers. (New York Times)

PBS NewsHour and the New York Times have teamed up to start a new book club, Now Read This, which will feature a new book of fiction or nonfiction each month. Readers are invited to submit their questions for each selected author via Facebook; the author will answer questions on PBS NewsHour at the end of each month. The first selection is Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Raquel Salas Rivera has been named the new poet laureate of Philadelphia, succeeding Yolanda Wisher. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

A new policy at New York prisons will make it harder for inmates to get books; inmates will no longer be able to receive shipments from family members or vendors not on an approved list. (New Yorker)

French publisher Short Edition has created a Short Story Dispenser, which prints out stories that can be read in one to five minutes. The publisher has installed more than 150 dispensers throughout France, as well as one in Francis Ford Coppola’s Café Zoetrope in San Francisco. (Verge)

Poet Ocean Vuong talks with Marginalia about writing the fourth draft of his novel, how he approaches social media, and the influence of both Christianity and Buddhism on his work.

Penguin Random House has acquired Rodale Books from Hearst for an undisclosed sum. Rodale Books has a strong backlist of nonfiction, cooking, and health and wellness titles. (Wall Street Journal)

The Creative Independent interviews poet, fiction writer, and translator John Keene about the challenges of translation and his writing process.