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.
The Asian American Writers’ Workshop has selected four writers for this year’s Margins Fellowship program [2], which supports emerging Asian and Asian diasporic authors. Meanwhile, five writers have been selected for the Open City Fellowship, which provides resources for the writing of narrative nonfiction about Asian and Muslim communities in New York City.
“I felt as though the stories had become impenetrable, echoing with endless comments and suggestions from years of workshop. I felt like a failure.” Reflecting on the ordeals of her own creative writing education, Neelanjana Banerjee praises the new visions for the fiction workshop presented by Matthew Salesses in his latest book, Craft in the Real World [3]. (Millions)
The Costa Book of the Year prize [4] has been awarded to The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey. The £30,000 award honors the best book of the year by a writer living in the U.K. or Ireland. (Irish Times)
“Writing, too, is a form of digging. A cultivation of ideas excavated from the subconscious and made to grow, as words on a page.” Anne Youngson reflects on writing and gardening during the pandemic [5]. (Literary Hub)
“I’ve read Neruda, Walcott, Brooks, Lorca and Hayden multiple times—everything they have written.” In his New York Times By the Book interview, Yusef Komunyakaa names some of his favorite poets [6].
“Since I was fourteen, I’d been writing every day.” The Los Angeles Review of Books has published an edited transcript from a 2013 event with the late poet Diane di Prima [7].
Entertainment Weekly teases an excerpt from Stephen King’s next novel [8], Billy Summers, which is forthcoming from Scribner in August.
A personal video message from Barack Obama [9] will be played at the American Booksellers Association 2021 Winter Institute. (Publishers Weekly)