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.
Lauded writer and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib is joining Tin House as an editor-at-large. “I am thankful for the opportunity to join the team at Tin House and begin the pursuit of work that propels and excites me,” said Abdurraqib in a press release. The publisher anticipates he will acquire three nonfiction titles per year.
Five libraries from five different countries—Australia, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, and China—have been selected as finalists for the Public Library of the Year prize. Administered by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, the award honors “new, innovative public libraries.” (Guardian)
Scott Borchert praises recently proposed legislation to create a Twenty-First Century Federal Writers’ Project, inspired by an initiative under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from the Depression era. The new iteration of the Federal Writers’ Project would offer $60 million in grants to institutions that would in turn hire writers to create work about this moment in America, with a particular focus on the fallout of the pandemic. “Never in the almost eighty years since the dissolution of the original FWP has there been such a unified and resonant call for its return,” Borchert writes. (New York Times)
Shelf Awareness has published a dedicated issue on the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc), which spotlights how the organization has served booksellers and comic book staff throughout the pandemic, to celebrate Binc’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
“You know the rules: The second person is a gimmick, the first-person plural is distracting, and omniscience is antiquated. It’s all true. But it’s also all wrong.” Sophie Stein recommends twelve books with daring points of view. (Electric Literature)
“I felt that my inner child had returned. I was searching for a way to ‘translate’ my poetic work into another form.” Poet Nicholas Wong writes about his recent foray into visual art. (Harriet)
“I don’t ever want to lie about reality, about what they will potentially go through, what they may have already went through at seven, and five, and three.” Kendra Allen on seeking to offer truth to the younger generation in her first poetry collection, The Collection Plate. (Rumpus)
“Few subjects spark as much book-world gossip as the blurb.” Tom Beer of Kirkus surveys the business of book blurbs.
