Chinua Achebe Dies at Eighty-Two, Measuring the Emotional Language in Books, and More

by
Bryanna Tidmarsh
3.22.13

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 at eighty-two years old. (New York Times).

A thirteen-page letter written by Oscar Wilde, 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 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 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.

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. (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