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.
Emily Stokes has been hired as the next editor of the Paris Review. Most recently Stokes has served as the senior editor for the New Yorker. “After a year in which we have been alone and driven mad by the news, the Review’s mandate, to publish ‘the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and the non-axe-grinders,’ is a timely calling,” she said. “I am tremendously excited and grateful for this opportunity.” Stokes succeeds Emily Nemens, who announced her departure earlier this month.
“Videos made mostly by women in their teens and twenties have come to dominate a growing niche under the hashtag #BookTok, where users recommend books, record time lapses of themselves reading, or sob openly into the camera after an emotionally crushing ending.” Elizabeth A. Harris writes about how TikTok users are influencing book sales. (New York Times)
The recipients of the 2021 Windham-Campbell Prizes have been revealed. Each year, Yale University confers $165,000 grants to eight authors writing in English anywhere in the world. The recipients are Kate Briggs, Dionne Brand, Nathan Alan Davis, Renee Gladman, Vivian Gornick, Michael R. Jackson, Canisia Lubrin, and Natalie Scenters-Zapico.
This year’s Paris Book Fair has been canceled. The French Publishers Association initially announced the event would only be postponed from March to May, but the organizers have since decided there are too many uncertainties with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (Shelf Awareness)
Claudio Saunt and Andy Horowitz are the winners of the 2021 Bancroft Prizes in American History and Diplomacy, administered by Columbia University Libraries. Saunt earned the prize for his book Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory, which was also a National Book Award finalist. Horowitz was selected for Katrina: A History, 1915–2015.
The Publishing Triangle has announced the finalists for its annual Triangle Awards, which honor the best LGBTQ writing of the year. The prizes include the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.
“Psychologists call our longing for human touch ‘skin hunger.’ It’s an odd and beautiful name that connotes not a want but a need.” Kristen Radtke shares a short graphic narrative about the loss of physical touch during the pandemic. (New York Times)
Esquire recommends ten Asian American narratives, including All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung and Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong.
