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:
As part of an installation designed by artists Paula Scher and Abbott Miller at the High Line Park in New York City, four thousand copies of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, are being given away. The installation is open through the weekend. (Huffington Post)
Poet Robin Coste Lewis has been named the next poet laureate of Los Angeles. Lewis, the author of the National Book Award–winning collection Voyage of the Sable Venus, will receive an annual $10,000 grant as part of the two-year term.
Tomorrow is Independent Bookstore Day. Bookstores across the country will be celebrating with readings, live music, parties, scavenger hunts, contests, and more. Read more about indie bookstores in Jeremiah Chamberlin’s series of interviews with booksellers in Poets & Writers Magazine.
Georgia high school senior Samara Elán Huggins has won the 2017 Poets Out Loud competition. The annual $20,000 prize was established in 2005 to encourage teenagers to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation; this year more than 310,000 students across the nation competed. (NEA Art Works Blog)
“So many of us become writers because we need for certain books to exist that no one else is writing; especially, those of us who have migrated or have been dislocated. If you need a book to exist badly enough, you’ll write it.” Writer Mohsin Hamid talks about his latest novel, Exit West; writing around the tropes of migration; and how fatherhood has changed him. (Guernica)
PEN America has released a report, Trump the Truth: Free Expression in the President’s First 100 Days, which calls out the president’s antagonistic relationship with the media.
James Patterson will write a true-crime book about former football star Aaron Hernandez, who killed himself last week while serving a lifetime sentence for murder. Little, Brown plans to publish the book in early 2018. (Newsweek)
At the New Yorker, Amanda Petrusich spends an afternoon in Brooklyn with poet Morgan Parker while she gets a tattoo.
