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.
Kima Jones and Renée Jarvis have joined Triangle House Literary, the boutique agency founded by Monika Woods, as agents. Jones, the founder of book publicity firm Jack Jones Literary Arts, reflected on the move: “Agenting has been my unofficial work of the last decade so I’m thrilled to make it official with Triangle House Literary.” Jarvis, meanwhile, will bring experience from her previous positions at MacKenzie Wolf Literary and Legal Outreach. (Literary Hub)
The U.S. Book Show, a new trade fair hosted by Publishers Weekly, will take place online from May 25 to 27. The event helps fill the void left by ReedPop, which announced last year that it would retire its popular industry extravaganza, BookExpo. Featured speakers at the new fair will include Oprah Winfrey, Keanu Reeves, and Elizabeth Warren. (New York Times)
The Letras Boricuas Fellowship, a new program administered by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Flamboyan Foundation, seeks to support “emerging and established Puerto Rican writers of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and children’s literature.” Thirty writers will each receive an unrestricted grant of $25,000, with the first fifteen recipients due to be announced in November 2021. Applications are accepted in both English and Spanish and are due on June 20.
n+1 has awarded its inaugural Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize to Trevor Shikaze. The journal established the $5,000 prize, which celebrates “an outstanding fiction writer whose work has appeared in n+1, in print, or online,” to honor the memory of So, who died in December last year. n+1 also announced Christina Nichol as the recipient of this year’s n+1 Writers’ Fellowship, which also comes with a $5,000 prize. (Publishers Weekly)
“The burden of representation, coupled with this new push to increase diversity at any cost, attempts to portray any and all marginalized voices as being these heartfelt storytellers who put themselves onto the page in an attempt to be seen.” Anmol Irfan writes about how authors of color are expected to only produce narratives that are legible to white audiences. (Bookseller)
Ronit Plank discusses losing her mother to a cult as a child, watching a docuseries that catapulted the group into the public consciousness, and then publishing her own memoir on the subject. “Now it was as if Atlantis had bubbled to the surface and everyone could look at it for themselves and form an opinion—this thing that I thought was gone forever.” (Rumpus)
“It occurred to me, Why not take that blissful, conflict-free thing, turn it into a cerebral project, and ruin it for yourself? So that’s what I did.” Alison Bechdel talks to Vulture about investigating her passion for exercise in her latest book, The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
Jordan Moblo has been appointed to serve as director of literary scouting for Netflix. Deadline reports that the new hire reflects the studio’s desire to develop more projects “from the ground up.”
