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:
Last Friday, three hundred fans of Pulitzer Prize–winning author Bernard Malamud gathered in Washington, D.C. for the PEN/Malamud memorial reading. The celebration honored what would be the author’s centennial birthday year, and featured readings from past winners of the Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, including Tobias Wolff and Lorrie Moore. (Washington Post)
Swansea University in Wales has acquired a previously unknown notebook containing drafts of Dylan Thomas’s poems after bidding £85,000 for it at a London auction. The notebook emerged seventy years after Thomas’s mother-in-law requested for it to be “burned in the kitchen boiler.” (Guardian)
Lena Dunham’s memoir Not That Kind of Girl has again come under scrutiny, this time for her pseudonym choice. In one of the book’s essays, Dunham used the pseudonym “Barry” for a man who allegedly sexually assaulted her at Oberlin College, and a man matching the description of her assaulter has taken legal action. Publisher Random House promises to alter future editions of Not That Kind of Girl to clarify that “Barry” is indeed a pseudonym. (NPR)
Speaking of pseudonyms, Italian novelist Elena Ferrante has always written under one. Read Ferrante’s extensive interview in which she discusses her choice of anonymity and the challenges of writing and motherhood at the New York Times.
Ravi Shankar, poet and professor at Central Connecticut State University, was arrested on Saturday for leaving an accident scene and driving with a suspended license. The poet has been arrested and jailed in the past for driving under the influence and for credit card fraud. Being found guilty of the current charges could warrant removal from his position at Central Connecticut State. (Courant)
After signing a seventeen-year lease for an office building in Manhattan, Amazon will now receive a multi-million-dollar tax break from the state of New York. The decision has caused some controversy as the state program generally gives tax breaks to smaller companies that “need help to grow or adapt,” which are not necessarily traits that define the massive company. (Melville House)
In the final weeks of the current legislative season, some Massachusetts state representatives are eager to have a bill passed that would allow the governor to designate the first official poet laureate of Massachusetts. The state is currently one of only six states currently without a poet laureate, despite that “there are probably more poets per square inch in parts of Massachusetts than anywhere else,” said poet and Pulitzer Prize–winner Lloyd Schwartz. (Boston Globe)
Santa knows if you’ve been naughty or nice, but e-bookseller Kobo knows if you didn’t finish that book you downloaded to your tablet. Kobo has released data revealing which books their British customers did not finish over the past year. Only about half of Kobo’s customers finished Donna Tartt’s bestselling novel The Goldfinch. (Telegraph)
