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:
Hala Alyan and Ta-Nehisi Coates have won the $10,000 2018 Dayton Literary Peace Prizes in fiction and nonfiction, respectively.
What would Roald Dahl’s child genius character Matilda have been like when she grew up? Illustrator Quentin Blake has drawn several images of a thirty-year-old Matilda as an astrophysicist, a world traveler, and a chief executive of the British Library. (Guardian)
Historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore talks about her 932-page book, These Truths: A History of the United States, out tomorrow from Norton. (New York Times)
Meanwhile, Japanese writer and perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature Haruki Murakami has withdrawn his nomination for the alternative Nobel Prize, saying he wants to “concentrate on writing, away from media attention.” (Japan Times)
New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma talks with Slate about his decision to publish an essay by Jian Ghomeshi in the publication’s most recent issue; in 2014 and 2015 many women accused Ghomeshi, a Canadian radio host and musician at the time, of sexual assault.
Sarah Smarsh talks about intergenerational poverty, the working poor, and her new memoir, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. (NPR)
U.K. educational publisher Pearson is still the world’s largest publisher, with sales of more than $6 billion in 2017. (Publishers Weekly)
“Catherine: What’re you up to tonight? Heathcliff: Being emo. You?” Imaginary Tinder exchanges between literature’s great couples. (New Yorker)
