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:
“Nabokov was a prodigious dreamer, his mind a wellspring of trenchant, tender, and perturbing images that he recounts with verve.” The New Yorker looks at the dream diary Vladimir Nabokov kept in 1964.
“I always understood myself individually and I extend that to my characters.” Tayari Jones speaks with BuzzFeed about her new book, An American Marriage.
As part of the Poets & Writers Crafts Capsules series, Jones shared four craft lessons she used in writing An American Marriage.
More than thirty years after the death of Michel Foucault, a French publisher has released the philosopher’s unfinished book, Confessions of the Flesh, despite Foucault’s instructions for no posthumous publications. (New York Times)
Penguin Random House has launched a new imprint that will publish diverse books of fiction and nonfiction for children and young adults. Namrata Tripathi has been named the publisher of the imprint, Kokila. (Publishers Weekly)
Novelist Rumaan Alam has joined the New York Times Books desk as a special projects editor. Alam will “elevate projects, spearhead new initiatives, and extend outside partnerships.” (New York Times)
Alam’s debut novel, Rich and Pretty, came out in 2016 and was featured in Poets & Writers annual debut fiction feature.
Adweek talks with Becca Wadlinger, the poet and copywriter who wrote the poem for the Coca-Cola ad that ran last Sunday during the Super Bowl.
“But the task that has seemed most urgent to me in the past few years (it is one I pursued in my short story “Cat Person,” published by the New Yorker in December 2017) has been to dissolve all that sticky varnish, peeling away the pretty words I used to coat and mask my desires to reveal the actual physical experiences underneath.” Kristen Roupenian writes about kissing and the forthcoming anthology The Kiss: Intimacies From Writers. (Times Literary Supplement)
A woman living on the Isle of Man has become the go-to transcriber of historical, unreadable documents. (Atlas Obscura)
