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The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin has added poet Billy Collins’s archive to its extensive collection of rare books and manuscripts; a public memorial to poet Wanda Coleman took place this past weekend in Los Angeles; former U. S. poet laureate Kay Ryan is recovering from injuries sustained during a bicycling accident; and other news.
"The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest," Martin Luther King Jr. said in a speech on December 5, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama. Poetry can be a powerful vehicle for protest and social change. Write a poem in which you confront a subject that inspires personal objection. The topic does not have to be strictly political. For instance, Dylan Thomas’s villanelle “Do not go gentle into that good night” protests the death of the poet’s father: “Do not go gentle into that good night / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” See how you can wield and transfer oppositional energy into language and form.
“I feel very transparent to myself. I’m more like an observer. I’m interested in what’s going on.” Joyce Carol Oates, whose most recent novel, Carthage, is published this month by Ecco, discusses her writing process, interests, and why she’s not sure she has a personality.
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is currently accepting applications for its annual creative writing fellowships. The $25,000 grants, which are given in alternating years to poets and prose writers, will be given in 2015 to poets. The deadline to apply is March 12, 2014.
Poets who have published at least one full-length poetry collection, or twenty or more poems or pages of poetry in five or more literary journals, anthologies, or publications, are eligible to apply. Detailed eligibility requirements are available here.
Complete application instructions, including all required materials, can be found on the NEA website. Applications must be submitted online through the Grants.gov website. Recipients will be announced in December 2014.
The annual fellowships are given in order to provide time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement for poets and prose writers. Applications are reviewed through an anonymous process in which “the only criteria for review are artistic excellence and artistic merit.” The NEA assembles a different advisory panel each year to review applications.
This year, thirty-eight fellowships were awarded to fiction and creative nonfiction writers; forty poets received the 2013 grants. Fellowships in fiction and creative nonfiction will be offered again in 2016; guidelines will be available on the NEA website in the fall of 2014.
Questions about the fellowship program and application process can be directed to the National Endowment for the Arts by e-mail to litfellowships@arts.gov or by phone at (202) 682-5034.
The Boston Globe reports that Amazon is working on a new product at its lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Paramount has purchased film rights to Sabaa Tahir’s first novel, An Ember in the Ashes, for seven-figures; Callie Leuck weighs in on the Oxford comma; and other news.
"I imagined that because everyone was telling me I was so very bright, there must be something there for me. But my skin was black," says Guyanese author, teacher, and diplomat E. R. Braithwaite, whose five nonfiction books and two novels, including To Sir, With Love (1959), are available as e-books from Open Road Integrated Media.
Julie Bosman reports that St. Martin’s Press has offered an eight-figure book deal to Sylvia Day; Pew Research reveals the percentage of adults who read e-books is rising; the Academy of American Poets announced that poets Khaled Mattawa and Alberto Ríos will serve on its Board of Chancellors; and other news.
“Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.” In this video, poet, teacher, and activist Maya Angelou recites her inspirational and engaging poem “Phenomenal Woman.”
Though people typically make every effort to appear confident, accomplished, and cheerful to others, we all have flaws and shortcomings. Many people, in fact, are defined on some level by their imperfections. From a fear of flying and substance abuse problems to shopping addiction and weight issues, the inner lives of the people you write about are just as compelling as how they dress or what they say. Write five hundred words about one of your shortcomings, and describe in detail how it affects your life and changed you as a person. Being honest about your life will make you a more empathic writer when characterizing the flaws of others.
Oyster, the Netflix-like service for literature, has raised fourteen million dollars in investments; Richard Nash will leave Small Demons and join Byliner; Benjamin Percy’s novel Red Moon has been optioned by FOX TV as a potential series; and other news.
