Uruguay’s Best Modern Writer, Algonquin Books Publisher Retires, and More

by
Staff
11.5.19

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.

Archipelago Books has published a complete collection of Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti’s short fiction, A Dream Come True, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver. At the New York Times, Ratik Asokan revisits the author’s work, analyzing both Onetti’s literary and political legacies. “However unflattering, his portrait of his country was one in which Uruguayans recognized something of themselves.”

Elisabeth Scharlatt plans to retire from her role as publisher of Algonquin Books, an imprint of Workman Publishing, on December 1. She first joined Algonquin in 1989, after terms at Random House and Macmillan. Workman has named Betsy Gleick, the current editorial director of Algonquin, as Scharlatt’s successor. (Publishers Weekly)

Noor Qasim interviews Carmen Maria Machado at the Paris Review Daily about her memoir, In the Dream House. Machado speaks to situating her story of domestic abuse in broader political and social histories. “How can I understand it as not just a thing that happened to me, a discrete thing, but also in the context of history and in queer history, and in the history of gender?”

Reginald Dwayne Betts talks to NPR All Things Considered about his latest collection, Felon, and embracing all of his identities and histories. “When I went to law school and I decided to be a lawyer, I didn't want to be, like, a lawyer and a poet. What I wanted was to be a lawyer-poet.”

Heather Christle shares how she organized the brief prose vignettes in The Crying Book—the method involved graph paper and colored pencils. (Literary Hub)

Joseph O’Neill discusses his speculative story in this week’s New Yorker, and explains why his protagonist is unhappy when he develops the ability to fly.  

In a conversation at Electric Literature, Tommy Pico talks to Arriel Vinson about his new collection, Feed. The pair discuss music, loneliness, and finding an environment that can nurture you

Lindy West on why she doesn’t mind if some of her activism and writing is critiqued as preaching to the choir: “The choir is who shows up.” (Rumpus)