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:
“Have you ever seen a ghost? Me neither, though I have had one touch me—horrible!” Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Perry, Max Porter, and Kamila Shamsie share their experiences visiting English heritage properties to write ghost stories for Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories. (Guardian)
With Halloween just around the corner, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Seattle Times recommend some spooky reads.
Literary agency William Morris Endeavor has dropped Bill O’Reilly as a client. O’Reilly, who was fired from Fox News in April, was also dropped by his longtime talent agency on Monday, after the New York Times reported that O’Reilly paid $32 million to a former Fox analyst to settle a sexual harassment suit. (CNN Money)
Turkish novelist Elif Shafak is the latest author to join the Future Library, an art project in which authors write pieces that will only be published and available to read in 2114. Each year creator and Scottish artist Katie Paterson asks an author to contribute a piece; the first three contributors were Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, and Sjón. (Guardian)
Speaking of Atwood: After the great success of its television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu will adapt another classic novel that grapples with big social issues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. (Variety)
Publishers Weekly has released its “Best Books 2017” lists, with the editors’ top picks in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and more.
Donald Bain, the pseudonymous author of many Murder, She Wrote novels, as well as Margaret Truman’s Capital Crimes mysteries, has died at the age of eighty-two. Bain also wrote the fictional memoir of two airline stewardesses, Coffee, Tea or Me. (New York Times)
Proust fans have two reasons to be excited in the coming weeks: On Monday, a rare copy of Swann’s Way will be auctioned off in Paris, and on November 11, hundreds of letters written by Proust, which reveal that the famed author wrote and paid for positive reviews of Swann’s Way, will be posted online. (New York Times)
