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.
Nine writers have earned the inaugural Silvers-Dudley Prizes. Three writers were selected for each of the three awards, which honor literary criticism, arts writing, and journalism, respectively. “These prizes richly reward a kind of writing that has long been under-recognized in the economy of literary prize-giving,” said Daniel Mendelsohn, director of the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. Robert Silvers, who died in 2017, was a cofounder and longtime editor of the New York Review of Books. The prizes are named in honor of him and his partner, Grace Dudley. (Washington Post)
A new independent publishing group is on the scene after the merger of Black Ocean and Not a Cult. The two publishers are to remain distinct imprints in the new company, the Chapter House Publishing Group. At Forbes, Daniel Lisi and Janaka Stucky, the respective founders of Not a Cult and Black Ocean, discuss the decision to join forces. The group will also add four brand-new imprints to its roster.
“If you want something to stay secret, don’t write about it for a decade. If you don’t want to ruin a neighborhood, shut the fuck up. (Or don’t move there in the first place.) And, anyway, it was beyond our control. You can’t stop the monster, the city of New York, the hungry giant, looking for land and sky and space.” Jami Attenberg writes about living through (and being part of) the gentrification of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. (New Yorker)
“There seemed no other way into writing than to be true to that feeling of inexpressibility such violence causes in the moment that shock was unfolding. It was extremely silencing.” Preti Taneja reflects on processing an act of extreme violence in her new nonfiction book, Aftermath. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
Bonhams is holding an auction of books from Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s private collection later this month. Among the thousand volumes up for sale are copies of Beloved by Toni Morrison and My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem with personal inscriptions from the authors. (Bloomberg)
“Writers turn to ghost stories not just for chills and fear but also because they’re a powerful medium for reckoning with memory and history.” Colin Dickey recommends eight books that feature ghosts to powerful effect. (Atlantic)
Angela María Spring pulls together a “sampling of brilliant collections you may have missed this year,” including It Was Never Going to Be Okay by jaye simpson and Iron Goddess of Mercy by Larissa Lai. (Electric Literature)
Nearly two hundred books are listed in Literary Hub’s roundup of the most anticipated books publishing this year.
