Book the Vote, MacDowell Reopens at Reduced Capacity, and More

by Staff
10.14.20

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.

In partnership with PEN America, Out of Print, and When We All Vote, Penguin Random House has launched Book the Vote, a new programming initiative to educate readers about voting and other civics topics. (Publishers Weekly)

MacDowell has announced it will reopen its in-person residency program—with adjustments due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic—beginning October 21. Among its new guidelines, MacDowell will reduce its typical resident population by half. 

Earlier this summer MacDowell piloted a virtual residency program, which Thea Prieto wrote about for Poets & Writers Magazine.

“It’s 2020, and I watch my friends ride along the same tracks of outrage, mourning, over-grind, burnout.” Poet Franny Choi writes about watching Battlestar Galactica during quarantine, and searching for a means to break the cycle of racism. (Rumpus)

“With the book, I’m not denying that any other generation was burnt out, but that all the forces and timing have accumulated on us as a generation.” Anne Helen Peterson discusses historicizing millennial burnout in her new book, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. (Guernica)

Bookshop has announced the members of its U.K. board. Launched in the United States in January, the popular e-commerce platform will open to U.K. readers in the first week of November. (Bookseller)

“Except for passages at public readings, I hadn’t read the entire book since galley proofs in 1996.” John Morgan Wilson talks to Lambda Literary Review about revising his queer mystery debut, Simple Justice, for a new twenty-fifth anniversary edition. 

A24 has acquired the rights to adapt Bryan Washington’s forthcoming novel, Memorial, for television. (Deadline)

The Guardian recommends ten books on the art of writing, including Essays by Lydia Davis and Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison.