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.
“Racism and sexism spin like coins, two-faced. With one spin of the coin, we can be the model minority and the object of ‘yellow fever.’ With another spin, we can be the Asian invasion and the yellow peril.” Viet Thanh Nguyen contextualizes the recent Atlanta spa shootings within a broader history of anti-Asian racism. (Guardian)
Booksellers across the United States are showing support for the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. In New York City, Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria organized a vigil for the victims of the Atlanta shootings. Out west in Washington, Third Place Books raised funds for Seattle nonprofit API Chaya by donating 20 percent of sales from a number of titles by Asian American authors. (Shelf Awareness)
Beloved editor and publisher Giancarlo DiTrapano died on March 30 at age forty-seven. He founded the literary journal New York Tyrant Magazine in 2006, then established Tyrant Books in 2009. “Gian helped shape and change the literary culture of the twenty-first century,” said Tyrant author Scott McClanahan. (Publishers Weekly)
n+1 has established a new fiction prize to honor the memory of Anthony Veasna So, who died in December last year. The $5,000 annual prize will go to “an outstanding fiction writer whose work has appeared in n+1, in print, or online.” Meanwhile, Ecco is working with So’s loved ones on the final preparations for the publication of his debut story collection, Afterparties. (Publishers Weekly)
“Many readers think of his writing as characterized by polemic and raw confession. But his work could also be gentle, loving, and playful, and nowhere are these qualities more evident than in his fiction.” Boston Review has reprinted the late Binyavanga Wainaina’s first published short story.
“To publish a novel in your early twenties is impressive; to publish one at the age of ninety-three is something else altogether.” Giles Harvey writes about Cynthia Ozick’s career and latest novel, Antiquities. (New Yorker)
“There was not going to be a quick fix, no simple way to make it OK. Gardening, I was learning, is not easy. Like grief, it’s a process.” Poet and essayist Kathy Davis writes about cultivating a meadow of wildflowers after losing both her parents. (Guernica)
Steven Guarnaccia pokes fun at the proliferation of bowler hats in literature. (New York Times)
