To Kill a Mockingbird Graphic Novel, Waste Collector Creates Free Library, and More

by
Staff
6.7.17

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:

Publisher William Heinemann will release a graphic novel adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in November 2018. Artist Fred Fordham will illustrate the book, which was endorsed by the Harper Lee estate. (Guardian)

HarperCollins announced changes to its executive team: Chantal Restivo-Alessi, currently the company’s chief digital officer and executive vice president of international operations, will now oversee the global publishing program and operations of all foreign language publishing. Craig Swinwood, the CEO of Harlequin, will also be the CEO of HarperCollins Canada. (Publishers Weekly)

“What’s our obligation to our family in terms of the types of things that we write about? Because, in the white poetry world, people are like, Your responsibility is to your art. But in the brown culture world, we know it’s a little more complicated than that. How do you handle it?” Kazim Ali and Kaveh Akbar discuss sharing poems with their families, their poetic lineages, and how the language of Islam informs their poetry. (Margins)

Jose Alberto Gutierrez, a waste collector in Bogota, Colombia, has salvaged more than twenty thousand discarded books and has made them into a free library he shares with people in poorer parts of the city. (BBC News)

“This is how my son has changed my writing the most…. I understand that everything around writing is as important as the writing.” Fiction writer Emily Schultz shares how raising a child with autism has shown her new ways of approaching writing and creativity. (Slate)

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” On the fiftieth anniversary of Dorothy Parker’s death, Literary Hub rounds up some of the critic’s best quips.

The Stanford University Libraries have made all of Allen Ginsberg’s drafts of his poem “Howl” available online.

“He was a funny, outgoing, inspiring man, but he knew that the only thing that counted, the only thing that really mattered in the end, was the fiction on the page.” Writer David Means remembers studying under Denis Johnson and the late author’s lasting advice. (New Yorker)