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:
Ursula K. Le Guin discusses writing while raising kids, progress versus change, and the risks of the “unbridled imagination.” (Los Angeles Review of Books)
“She offers her readers a spiritual release that they might not have realized they were looking for…. She tends to use nature as a springboard to the sacred, which is the beating heart of her work.” Ruth Franklin defends poet Mary Oliver against her critics and reviews her latest collection of selected poems, Devotions. (New Yorker)
“She cannot have our words if she cannot respect us.” Fiction writer Zinzi Clemmons has announced that she will no longer write for Lena Dunham’s publication Lenny Letter, saying that Dunham does not respect women of color. (Vulture)
“The reason I wrote the book was because I wanted people to know what a remarkable man my son was.” NPR interviews former vice president Joe Biden about his new memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.
The library of Richard Adams, the Watership Down author who died last year, will be auctioned next month. Adams’s library includes a first edition of Jane Austen’s Emma, a copy of Shakespeare’s second folio, and Milton’s epic poem “Lycidas,” among other treasures. (Guardian)
David France has won the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for his book How To Survive a Plague. The annual £30,000 award is given for a book of nonfiction published in the previous year by a writer of any nationality.
In other awards news, Anuk Arudpragasam won the 2017 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage; Arudpragasam will receive $25,000.
As Congress debates the Republican-backed tax plan, the New York Times recommends books about taxes.
Louise Erdrich shares six favorite books that will transport you, including Magda Szabo’s The Door and Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table. (Week)