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:
Today is Arts Advocacy Day, organized by Americans for the Arts, which brings hundreds of art advocates to Washington, D.C., where they will meet with members of Congress to discuss the power of the arts in their communities.
Arts Advocacy Day comes one month after Donald Trump’s administration released its proposed budget for fiscal year 2019 which renews his earlier bid to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
In the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers, nine authors write about the life-changing support of an NEA fellowship.
From Hay-on-Wye in Wales and Fjærland in Norway to Paju Book City in South Korea and Clunes in Australia, journalist Alex Johnson talks about the growth of book towns—“out-of the-way places defined by their books”—in countries around the world. (Atlas Obscura)
The longlist for the Man Booker International Prize, a £50,000 award given annually for a book of translated fiction, has been announced. The list includes translations of books by Han Kang, László Krasznahorkai, and Ahmed Saadawi. (Guardian)
“She was flamboyant indulgence plus strictness, scrupulousness plus irreverence, refinement plus teasing impudence, and for those who were close to her, there was a devilish sense of humor that exceeded the prim and overly-proper.” Mary Jo Bang remembers poet Lucie Brock-Broido, who died last week at age sixty-one. (Boston Review)
Upon the recent release of translations of Mario Vargas Llosa’s latest essay collection, Sabers and Utopias, and his newest novel, The Neighborhood, the New York Times considers the evolution of the Peruvian Nobel laureate’s style and liberal politics.
“Whether we love Wilder or hate her, we should know her.” Laura Ingalls Wilder biographer Caroline Fraser argues that the writer’s Little House on the Prairie series should still be taught in schools, but with greater historical context and discussion of the books’ racist portrayal of Native Americans. (Washington Post)
Daniel Mallory Ortberg, founder of the website the Toast and author of Texts From Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, talks with the Cut about coming out as trans.
