Jump to navigation Skip to content
“It was in the autumn—it felt like the perfect time to do this ritual, when everything’s changing to go to sleep for the winter....” In this interview at the 2018 Louisiana Literature festival in Denmark, CAConrad talks about how performing rituals after their boyfriend’s death gave rise to the poetry in their collection While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017), which won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry.
Edward Carey’s Madame Tussaud; readers on their Tsundoku stacks; Bret Easton Ellis on his first novel in nearly ten years; and other news.
“Maybe every talk about poetry is a defense of poetry,” says Tony Hoagland in this 2011 Chicago Ideas Week talk at the Poetry Foundation on the mind of a poet and how poets explain the world. Hoagland, the author of eight books of poetry and a recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize, died on October 23 at the age of sixty-four.
Sarah Perry on Melmoth; Friday Black tackles capitalism; advice on writing a book proposal; and other news.
Split Rock Books was founded in 2018 by Heidi and Michael Bender, a married couple. After over ten years working as booksellers (and in Michael’s case, as a librarian too!) in a variety of stores in New York City and beyond, they moved up to Cold Spring to open up their own store.
Split Rock carries a curated selection of new books with a focus on literary fiction and nonfiction, small presses, local interests, and children’s books. The shop hosts a variety of children’s and family programming, book clubs, readings, signings, and discussions.
“It’s the way we have to connect not only the intellect, but also the heart, to engage the whole body with breath, with rhythm.” Natasha Trethewey, recipient of the 22nd Heinz Award for the Arts and Humanities, talks about the immense value of poetry. Trethewey’s fifth poetry collection, Monument: Poems New and Selected (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), is featured in Page One in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Creator of Shitty Media Men List signs book deal; Stephen King options short story for $1; John Wray on his forthcoming novel; and other news.
Lacy M. Johnson on sexual assault and justice; New York Times profiles Eve L. Ewing; a European preference for historical fiction; and other news.
“I always feel that I’ve seen a thing after I’ve described it….when I’ve written a thorough physical description of something, then I feel like I’ve seen it and I’ll remember it,” says Barbara Kingsolver in “A Talk in the Woods,” her conversation with Richard Powers in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. Choose an object that you have never really given much thought to, but that you see frequently in your home or on your commute, perhaps a houseplant or a mailbox or a street sign. Spend some time intensely observing it, and then jot down a thorough physical description. Afterwards, write a poem about the object. How did your perception of it change, in your mind’s eye, after going through the exercise of articulating it in language?
The founder of Little Free Library has died; Mohammed Hanif on writing politically in Pakistan; eleven San Francisco bookstores receive grants; and other news.
