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 New Yorker has assembled a collection of archival pieces to honor James Baldwin’s birthday [2]. The set includes Baldwin’s own essay “Letter From a Region in My Mind,” which was first published in the magazine in 1962. Baldwin would have turned ninety-seven today.
“I have learned that you have to know your past if you are to have a strong future.” Yesterday, Canada officially observed Emancipation Day [3]—slavery was abolished in the British Empire on August 1, 1834—for the first time. For CBC News, librarian Yolanda Hood shared a reading list featuring both scholarship on the history of slavery in Canada as well as books that speak to contemporary Black life.
“When I first started out in poetry I was trying to make things sound good; make things sound poetic. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t. Now when I go to the page, it’s a more truthful thing.” RC Davis, who was recently named to this year’s cohort of five National Student Poets, reflects on his evolving poetic practice [4]. (Chicago Tribune)
“Money—having it, not having it—gives rise to such primal emotions: fear, shame, anger, insecurity. There’s a huge silence around it.” Martha Cooley discusses using a lottery jackpot as a plot device [5] in her latest novel, Buy Me Love. (Los Angeles Review of Books)
“I have a funny relationship to the idea of realism.” Alexandra Kleeman, the author of Something New Under the Sun, talks to the New York Times about her preference for the speculative [6].
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, which was recently longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize [7], is slated to be adapted for television [8] by Picturestart. Shipstead will serve as an executive producer. (Deadline)
Entertainment Weekly has revealed the cover of John le Carré’s posthumous novel [9], Silverview, which is due out on October 12 from Viking. The acclaimed espionage writer died in December last year [10].
Oprah Daily recommends twenty books forthcoming this month [11], including Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette and The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.