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Every day the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine scan the headlines—publishing reports, literary dispatches, academic announcements, and more—for all the news that creative writers need to know.
The Life of Herod the Great, a final novel by Zora Neale Hurston, will be published for the first time by HarperCollins imprint Amistad in January 2025. The Guardian reports that the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God was working on the sequel to her 1939 novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, when she died in 1960.
The BBC looks at the rise of the Slow Living movement, as illuminated in several recent books, including Emma Gannon’s A Year of Nothing and Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. “To be facetious about it: Hustle is out, and rest is in,” writes Holly Williams.
The Atlantic recommends six books, including the novels Personal Days by Ed Park and Temporary by Hilary Leichter, for readers wrestling with questions of modern employment, such as whether it’s time to quit.
Peter Heller offers a reading list for visitors to Denver, including Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Woman of Light and Kent Haruf’s Plainsong, for the New York Times series Read Your Way Around the World.
Audible.com has launched an AI-powered feature that allows users to search for audiobooks using “natural language queries,” according to Publishers Weekly.
According to KIRO Newsradio in Seattle, officials at Washington State University in Pullman have decided to eliminate funding for Washington State University Press. The roughly $300,000 cut is effective at the end of December, at which point the press would be shut down. “We’re the only publisher that really covers the Inland Empire, Washington, Idaho, Oregon…and we work a lot with tribal communities to provide an outlet for their stories,” Linda Bathgate, the press’s editor in chief told KIRO Newsradio’s Feliks Banel. “So we feel that this was a very short-sighted, and maybe not a well-thought-out decision, maybe just a financial decision, but without consideration to the repercussions.”
The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses has awarded $350,000 in capacity-building grants to forty-six literary publishers, including Deep Vellum Publishing, the Feminist Press, Nightboat Books, and Ugly Duckling Presse. Recipients will receive grants of $5,000 or $10,000 to support projects that build organizational capacity and ensure greater sustainability. Through a similar program, the National Book Foundation has awarded $350,000 in capacity-building grants to forty-nine nonprofit literary organizations, including 826DC, Girls Write Now, and Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
Flatiron Books, a division of Macmillan, will launch a new imprint, Pine & Cedar Books, next summer, reports Publishers Weekly. The imprint will publish “compulsively readable, story-driven novels” with a focus on “compelling plot, originality, and potential to leave a lasting impact on its readers.” Among the books on its inaugural list is King of Ashes by bestselling author S. A. Cosby.
The Utah State Board of Education has ordered schools to remove thirteen books from classrooms and libraries, including books by Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake) and Judy Blume (Forever), “because they have content considered pornographic or indecent under a new state law,” the New York Times reports. “It is a dark day for the freedom to read in Utah,” says Kasey Meehan, Freedom to Read program director at PEN America. “The state’s No-Read List will impose a dystopian censorship regime across public schools and, in many cases, will directly contravene local preferences.”
Pope Francis has said that reading novels and poems is valuable in “one’s path to personal maturity” and should be encouraged in the training of future priests, according to a report in the Guardian.
George Saunders reflects on his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, which landed at number 18 in the New York Times list of “100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” (His story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December also made the list, at numbers 85 and 54, respectively.)
Publishers Weekly previews ten noteworthy nonfiction debuts, including In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother’s Secret Life by Sadiya Ansari and First in the Family: A Story of Survival, Recovery, and the American Dream by Jessica Hoppe. Be sure to check out “The New Nonfiction 2024,” forthcoming in the September/October 2024 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, for essays by five other debut nonfiction writers.
Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward remembers learning to read and, eventually, discovering novels by Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Morrison, in the Washington Post.
Sloane Crosley, who appeared on the cover of the March/April 2024 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, writes about the loss of a pet—and the stories we construct to fill their absence. “When I teach, I encourage students to find the second story. Tear up the floorboards of the first story and see what treasure lies beneath,” she writes in the New Yorker.
Belt Publishing has announced that it will publish the final issue of Creative Nonfiction, the literary magazine founded thirty years ago by Lee Gutkind.
On the centennial of James Baldwin’s birth—he would have celebrated his 100th birthday today—NPR’s Morning Edition takes a close look at a few of his sentences “to figure out what made his writing so affecting, so indelible, so good that it’s still worth reading today.” The Atlantic explores his letters “with celebrities, activists, fans, and fellow literati” in his archive at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. And Esquire talks with four of Baldwin’s nephews who remember their beloved “Uncle Jimmy.”
The Southwest Review, the literary magazine founded in 1915 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, is launching a book-publishing arm called New Pony Press that aims to publish a single title a year, with an emphasis on literary works. Greg Brownderville, the Southwest Review’s editor in chief, told Publishers Weekly that the press “aims to spotlight ‘cult authors’ and ‘maverick writers’ who have devoted followings but may not have achieved widespread recognition.” The first title, an art book by Barry Gifford titled Disappearances, will be published on October 8.
The New York Times looks at a number of translators who are publishing as authors themselves, including Jennifer Croft (The Extinction of Irena Rey), Lily Meyer (Short War), and Anton Hur (Toward Eternity).
Barnes & Noble is set to purchase Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore for $1.83 million, Denverite reports.
On NPR’s Code Switch podcast, Hawaiian author Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu talks about why she’s not losing sleep over her book, Kapaemahu, getting targeted by a ban in Virginia.
Alexandra Schwartz of the New Yorker explores two new books that attempt to identify what it takes to live a life of sustained creativity: Stacey D’Erasmo’s The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry and Adam Moss’s The Work of Art.
Min Jin Lee looks back at her novel Pachinko, which landed at no. 15 in the New York Times list of “100 Best Books of the 21st Century.”
East Bay Booksellers, a popular bookstore in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland, California, was destroyed in a fire early Tuesday morning, the Oaklandside reports.
Elisabeth Jaquette has been named executive director of Words Without Borders, the literary arts organization and magazine for translated literature in English. Previously she led the American Literary Translators Association, which just announced her departure, for over seven years.
The Atlantic examines a new documentary, How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer (A Cautionary Tale), directed by Jeff Zimbalist, that “offers a model for reassessing the lives of monstrous men.” In addition to writing dozens of books, including two winners of the Pulitzer Prize (The Executioner’s Song and The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel / The Novel as History) during a career that spanned six decades, in 1960 Mailer stabbed his second wife (of six), nearly killing her.
Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner, Tommy Orange, and Richard Powers are among the thirteen novelists longlisted for the 2024 Booker prize, reports the Guardian.
Jim Hicks is stepping down as executive editor of the Massachusetts Review after fifteen years on the job. The Daily Hampshire Gazette looks back at his tenure.
The New York State Writers Institute celebrates the late Stanley Kunitz, who was born on this day in 1905.
The Guardian remembers Edna O’Brien, the Irish author whose early novels, including The Country Girls, won international acclaim but were banned in Ireland. O’Brien died on Saturday at the age of 93.
Despite the popularity of the genre it aims to support, the Romance Writers of America has suffered a drop in its membership of 80 percent. The New York Times reports that the organization’s annual gala, originally scheduled for July 31 in Austin, was first cancelled then rescheduled for October.
NPR tells the story of Baldwin & Co., a Black-owned bookstore in New Orleans, that is counting down the days to what would have been the 100th birthday of its namesake, James Baldwin.
Sam Helmick has been named president of the American Library Association (ALA). Helmick succeeds Ray Pun, who won the election for ALA president in March but, according to Publishers Weekly, announced last month that he was stepping down for health reasons. Helmick was the runnerup in that election.
A spokesperson for HarperCollins told the Associated Press that more than 650,000 copies of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis have been sold since Donald Trump selected J. D. Vance as his running mate on July 15. Meanwhile, Publishers Weekly points out that BookScan numbers for the week following President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, leaving Vice President Kamala Harris, the author of The Truths We Hold: An American Journey, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, will not be available for another week or so.
“Traditional marriage is a patriarchal tool used to control and dehumanize women,” says Sarah Manguso, whose new novel, Liars, was published earlier this week, in an interview with Marisa Wright for Electric Literature.
Lisa Jewell and Rebecca Yarros were among the winners of the 2024 TikTok Book Awards, the BBC reports. Thousands of members of the #BookTok community on the video-sharing app voted for their favorite authors as part of the second annual competition.
Penguin Random House has unveiled a new global corporate logo that includes the familiar penguin icon, a feature that was missing from its logo since the 2013 merger of Penguin Books and Random House. (Publishers Lunch)
New York Times book critic Dwight Garner makes the case for why the work of Larry Brown, Harry Crews, and Barry Hannah—three of the best writers in “a genre sometimes referred to as Grit Lit, or Rough South,” according to Garner—are still worth reading.
Cartoonist Roz Chast will receive the Brooklyn Book Festival’s annual BoBi (Best of Brooklyn) award, given to those who best exemplify the spirit of the New York City borough. According the Associated Press, Edwidge Danticat, Terrance Hayes, Attica Locke, Lorrie Moore, and Jenny Xie are among the writers expected to attend the festival, which runs from September 22 to September 30.
Publishers Weekly reports that the National Book Foundation’s Book Rich Environments (BRE) program “has surpassed the two million mark for free books distributed to young people and families in public housing communities across the United States.”
Lewis H. Lapham, the founder of Lapham’s Quarterly and the long-time editor of Harper’s magazine, has died at the age of 89.
Books about show business that once belonged to famed editor Robert Gottlieb, who died last June at the age of 92, were sold last weekend at a fair in the lobby of the Metrograph theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the New York Times reports.
PEN America has condemned the sentencing by a Russian court of Alsu Kurmasheva, a Prague-based book editor and a journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who was convicted of “spreading false information” about the Russian military. Kurmasheva was sentenced to six and a half years in prison.
The Guardian reports that almost 400 votes for the pretigious Hugo Award for science fiction and fantasy writing “were fraudulently paid for to help one finalist win.” On Monday the Hugo administration subcommittee issued a statement saying that 377 votes “with obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics” had been disqualified.
The first in a series of conversations with authors appearing in the New York Times list of “The Best Books of the 21st Century,” Colson Whitehead looks back at The Underground Railroad, which landed in the seventh spot.
Fine Books & Collections magazine highlights the latest installment in Montblanc’s Writers Edition series of fancy writing instruments. The Jane Austen fountain pen features, among others details, “a cap ring with the inscription ‘XLIII,’ a reference to Chapter 43 of Pride and Prejudice in which Elizabeth sees Pemberley Woods for the first time.” The pen is listed on the Montblanc website for the jaw-dropping price of $4,700.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of writer, activist, public intellectual, and beloved library patron James Baldwin (August 2), the New York Public Library has put together special exhibitions, free programs for all ages, book giveaways, and more.
Despite a deadly attack on one of Ukraine’s largest book-printing plants in May in Kharkiv, the Ukrainian Book Institute tells NPR that bookstore chains have opened dozens of new stores in the past year alone and that independent bookshops such as Sens, in Kyiv, are thriving.
The Associated Press attended this year’s Hemingway Days, an annual celebration of the author’s life and work in Key West, Florida, that concluded on Sunday, marking the 125th anniversary of Hemingway’s birth on July 21, 1899.
In the mood to listen to something other than political news and commentary? Electric Literature recommends thirteen literary podcasts, including The Lonely Voice and LARB Radio Hour.
The New York Times talks to Edward P. Jones about his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Known World, which was recently voted the best work of fiction by an American writer in the 21st century.
Dubbing the current era of celebrity book clubs a “reading revolution,” Elle considers how “the literary world became 2024’s biggest trend.”
KCBS Radio reports on a new literary magazine, The Dreams I Dreamt: Letters to San Francisco, which is being offered for free. Contributors to the first issue include May-lee Chai, Vanessa Hua, D. A. Powell, and others.
The papers of former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo have been acquired by Brown University’s John Hay Library. “The acquisition, which primarily consists of Harjo’s materials from 2021 through 2024, advances a commitment at Brown to stewarding scholarly resources that include Native and Indigenous voices and work,” according to a statement from the university.
Now that JD Vance has been enshrined as the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, critics—including at Slate, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times—are reconsidering his memoir and the Netflix film based on it, Hillbilly Elegy.
The New York Times profiles Ko Maung Saungkha, a poet who leads a rebel militia fighting Myanmar’s dictatorial government. He is “one of at least three [poets] who are leading rebel forces in Myanmar and inspiring young people to fight on the front lines of the brutal civil war.”
Hachette Book Group is realigning the company, which involves layoffs of staff at Workman Publishing and moving Algonquin Books into Little, Brown, reports Publishers Weekly.
Dominican American author Julia Alvarez—author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies, among other books—is the subject of a new American Masters documentary from PBS, scheduled to be released in September, reports Variety.
The New York Times offers a dispatch from the New York City Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island this past weekend, including interviews with poets, writers, and other attendees.
Publishers Weekly reports on Disobedience Press, a new imprint from the University of Michigan’s Michigan Publishing Services that specializes in books addressing resistance to power. The press’s inaugural title, published this month, is Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right’s Assault on Public Education and the Teachers Who Are Fighting Back, which compiles narratives from more than a dozen teachers and librarians across the United States about the recent rise in book banning by conservative activists.
Audible is launching a new royalties program the audiobooks and streaming company says will create more financial opportunities for writers and other content creators. The program “evolved out of ongoing conversations with authors and publishers, and that advances our creator-centric ethos. Under this model, creators are able to monetize more types of content, and listeners will get to discover more innovative storytelling,” says a statement from the company.
Publishing houses were busy buying various media properties during the first half of the year, including “a flurry of smaller deals among indies, with tough economics forcing smaller presses to either cash out or scale up,” reports Publishers Weekly.
An unpublished novel by Zora Neale Hurston will be released in January by Amistad. Literary Hub considers “what we know” about the impending publication.
