Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories.
Publishers Weekly rounds up the latest literary conference and event cancellations due to the global coronavirus outbreak. Recent cancellations include the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the London Book Fair, the National Book Critics Circle awards ceremony, the Texas Library Association’s annual conference, and the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Publishing University event.
Ysabelle Cheung discusses using fragmentary writing to articulate the realities of life in Hong Kong. “I have arrived at the conclusion that it is no longer authentic to seek internal closure or wholeness in writing about or from Hong Kong.” (Literary Hub)
Megan Fernandes talks to the Rumpus about her new collection, Good Boys, and the seismic power of the best poetry. “That is literally what it means to be moved by something. You are reoriented. You are no longer who you were before you read that.”
In the age of incessant digital noise, Bilal Qureshi celebrates the writers who remind readers how to dwell in the quiet. “Silence is more than the absence of noise. It is the cumulative experience of personal space and a mind at rest, with room to think and contemplate.” (Washington Post)
Josh Cook of Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shares tips for how to support indie bookstores during the coronavirus outbreak. (Publishers Weekly)
Sophie Hardcastle talks to the Guardian about her new novel, Below Deck, and representing sexual violence in fiction.
Cultural institutions across the nation are doing their part to encourage social distancing. The New York Public Library has closed all its locations through April 1. (New York Times)
Sarah Neilson recommends fourteen forthcoming queer books. (Electric Literature)