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.
The ten best books of the year according to the editors at the New York Times Book Review have been revealed. The five fiction and five nonfiction titles on this year’s list include Intimacies by Katie Kitamura, How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, and How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith.
Scribner has decided to cease distribution of the memoir Lucky by Alice Sebold in the wake of the news that Anthony Broadwater, the man Sebold previously accused of the rape that is discussed in the book, has been exonerated. In a statement, the publisher noted it will “consider how the work might be revised.” (Guardian)
“I worried about how the pandemic’s upheaval would affect these bars, and other queer spaces writ large. They’d taught me how to make a way in the world. Now I wanted to see how they were faring themselves.” Author Bryan Washington describes visits to gay bars across the country over the past year, tracking what has and has not changed for these establishments in the most recent phase of the pandemic. (New Yorker)
“When you’re translating experimental work, sometimes the tools you might want to use to re-create an experiment can take you further from a narrator’s voice. So you have to find the balance between the experiment and the essence of the book.” Emma Ramadan reflects on the art of translating experimental writing. (Public Books)
Veteran editor and publishing executive Charlie Conrad, who worked at numerous imprints over the course of his career, including Doubleday and Penguin, died on November 21 at age sixty-one. The cause was complications of ALS. (Publishers Weekly)
Writing the Land, a new poetry project spearheaded by Lis McLoughlin, invites poets to write about and respond to conservation land trusts. McLoughlin recently edited an anthology that collects the results of this project in the Northeast. (Valley News)
“Wordplay is never just a pyrotechnic aftereffect in Sondheim’s shows—it’s foundational, crucial to the plot and the characters’ emotional development.” Adrienne Raphel writes in praise of the wordplay of Stephen Sondheim, who died on Friday at age ninety-one. (Paris Review Daily)
Kirthana Ramisetti’s debut novel, Dava Shastri’s Last Day, has been chosen as the December read for the Good Morning America Book Club. (ABC News)
