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.
“Your parents’ courtship story is your origin story and your first exposure to propaganda. In my case, their story was about reinforcing in me the importance of education and civil rights.” At the Wall Street Journal, Tayari Jones reflects on her journey to becoming a writer.
The MacDowell Colony has announced that Philip Himberg will succeed Cheryl A. Young as the organization’s executive director. Himberg joins MacDowell from the Sundance Institute, where he served as the theatre program’s artistic director.
Read the interview with Young by Dana Isokawa in the new issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
This fall Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books will republish four books by writer and artist Tomi Ungerer: The Underground Sketchbook, The Party, Babylon and Adam and Eve. Ungerer, who died this month, was widely celebrated for his children’s books, but much of his adult work is out of print in the United States. (New York Times)
“The important thing about literature is that we’re not telling the ultimate truth, and I don’t think there is such a thing, by the way. The truth of the moment speaks to everyone and can go beyond time. This has been true since Gilgamesh, and the first epics: The truth of the moment still speaks to us.” At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Elias Khoury talks about spirituality and power, false starts, and his new novel, My Name Is Adam.
Novelist Don Winslow has challenged Donald Trump to a debate about the president’s proposed border wall, and Stephen King has offered $10,000 to make it happen. Winslow’s new thriller, The Border, is scheduled to release next week. (Los Angeles Times)
Australian author Nick Milligan is seeing some similarities between his 2013 novel, Enormity, and the upcoming Danny Boyle film Yesterday: Both follow a protagonist, Jack, who finds himself in a world without the Beatles, and duly passes their music off as his own. (Guardian)
Read it Forward recommends twelve books that celebrate Black womanhood, including bone, a poetry collection by Yrsa Daley-Ward, and novels The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi and What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons.
In Ferrara, Italy, literary tourists are still searching for the Garden of the Finzi-Continis, a fictional refuge invented by Giorgio Bassani in his 1962 novel of the same name. Now a sculpture by Dani Karavan might provide the garden’s pilgrims with a destination. (Atlas Obscura)
