Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:

Chinua Achebe, renowned Nigerian author of the novel Things Fall Apart, has died [2] at eighty-two years old. (New York Times).

A thirteen-page letter written by Oscar Wilde [3], which advises writers not to rely on their written work for financial support, will be auctioned off on April 4. (NPR)

After a long history of archival restrictions, new light is about to be shed on the life of novelist Willa Cather [4] with the release of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, an anthology of 566 of her surviving letters. (New York Times)

Four new novels about Zelda Fitzgerald will be published [5]this year, all seeking to reshape the legacy surrounding her marriage, writing, and illness. (Wall Street Journal)

According to the Christian Science Monitor’s Ben Frederick, a newly published scientific study examining the use of emotional language in over five million books concludes that U.S. books are more emotional than their British counterparts [6].

With the upcoming release of Charles Newman’s In Partial Disgrace, a novel set in a fictional European country, editor Ben Ryder Howe shares ten other novels set in mythical countries [7]. (Publisher's Weekly)

According to the Washington Post, Reginald Bakeley’s Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop has won Britain’s Diagram Prize for this year’s oddest book title [8].