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:
Poet Kwame Dawes, who throughout the 2014 Winter Olympics has been writing verses to capture the spirit of each day’s games, bids farewell to Sochi [2]. (Harriet)
Over at the Millions, poet and author Nick Ripatrazone waxes nostalgic on the lost art of postal submissions [3].
Meanwhile, the Smithsonian reveals how computers uncovered J. K. Rowling’s secret pseudonym [4].
In honor of Black History Month, award-winning comic artist Afua Richardson, who has worked for Image, Marvel, and DC Comics, has illustrated Langston Hughes’s poem [5] “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” (NPR)
This month also marks the ninetieth birthday of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. To celebrate, NPR shares a rare 1929 audio recording [6] of Milne reading from the beloved book.
Edward Norton is set to write, direct, and star in an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel Motherless Brooklyn [7]—a project roughly fifteen years in the making. (Indiewire)
And on the topic of New York, MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction—the anticipated essay anthology edited by novelist and n+1 cofounder Chad Harbach that explores the current literary culture and the merit of getting an MFA—was released today [8].
Contemplating the question of what makes a classic, Flavorwire’s Jason Diamond asks twenty-one writers which books they’d add to the canon [9]—and which ones they’d like to see go.