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.
More than twenty thousand Christians have petitioned Netflix to drop the television show Good Omens for making satanism appear “normal.” Adapted by Neil Gaiman from the 1990 novel he cowrote with Terry Pratchett, the series is actually produced by Amazon Prime. (Guardian)
“It is hard to see any gain from tariffs on books, while the harm to American publishers, their customers, and American readers—as well as the American voices that are so important to education, religion, history, and culture—would be devastating.” At a hearing conducted by the U.S. Trade Representative, Association of American Publishers vice president Lui Simpson joined four other publishing industry representatives in arguing why books should be excluded from the Trump administration’s proposed tariff on goods imported from China. (Publishers Weekly)
Artforum remembers poet, novelist, playwright, editor, and pioneer of queer literature Kevin Killian, who died on Saturday aged sixty-six.
“For any poet, the balance between success and failure will always be movable and dynamic. We all need something to push against, and if success fell into our laps, we would have nothing to strive for.” Sarah Westcott shares a step-by-step guide to becoming a full-time poet. (Creative Independent)
In China, Uighur author Nurmuhammad Tohti has died following his detention in a “reeducation” camp. Human rights organizations have condemned the death of the seventy-year-old as a tragic loss. (Guardian)
Vulture profiles paranormal romance novelist Sherrilyn Kenyon, who made headlines earlier in the year when she alleged that her ex-husband and one of her former assistants had hatched a plot to murder her by poison.
“Reading Whitman silently enriches, but hearing your own or a partner’s voice luxuriate in the verse’s unhurried, insinuating cadences, drawn along on waves of alternately rough and delicate feeling, can quite overwhelm.” Why loafing in the lines is the best way to celebrate Walt Whitman’s two-hundredth birthday. (New Yorker)
And the A.V. Club reviews Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, in which Morrison herself is the film’s “most disarming and insightful commentator.”