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.
Sharon Polli has been appointed to serve as the next executive director of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. She will join the storied nonprofit in May after closing out her time as executive vice president of BRIC, an arts and media organization in Brooklyn, New York. “I believe in the vital role that the Fine Arts Work Center plays in supporting emerging talent in the arts and literature, and I am extremely honored to join the outstanding team,” said Polli.
“Translating literature, in any language, is a never-ending task. And we need more translations from minority languages not because we seek inclusion into cannons and anthologies. We need them to assert our very existence.” Armenian translator Garen Torikian expresses the urgency of translating literature written in minority languages. (Electric Literature)
“Like Ripley, she constantly fantasized; even in her journals she seemed incapable of distinguishing between reality and her inventions.” Edmund White compares Patricia Highsmith with Tom Ripley, her famous protagonist from The Talented Mr. Ripley. (T: The New York Times Style Magazine)
“As a young boy, I remember feeling I needed to become a doctor because the world or my immediate family needed compassion and support.” Fady Joudah talks to PBS NewsHour about his life as both a physician and a poet.
“What pervades the Internet Novel, really the Social Media novel, is a terror and guilt that in trying to shuck off our regional accents and gas station diets, we’ve all become a sea of beige vegan automatons.” Brandon Taylor reviews new novels by Lauren Oyler and Patricia Lockwood, situating their writing within the Gothic tradition. (Sweater Weather/Substack)
“It was my first understanding of how something I’d written could take on a life of its own, could speak for me in ways I didn’t want to be spoken for.” Kirstin Valdez Quade recalls when her college application essay was reprinted without her permission. (Paris Review Daily)
“The stage and the page, they’re both canvasses.” Kevin Kantor, the author of Please Come Off-Book, shares how his theater experience informs his poetry. (Lambda Literary Review)
The New York Times recommends fifteen books forthcoming next month, including a previously unpublished novel by Richard Wright, The Man Who Lived Underground.
