Chris Jackson Relaunches One World Imprint, Book Prescriptions, and More

by
Staff
4.12.16

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:

Chris Jackson, current executive editor of Spiegel & Grau, will officially relaunch the Random House imprint One World in fall 2017. Jackson will serve as vice president, publisher, and editor in chief of One World, which will publish fiction and nonfiction with a multicultural focus. One World was founded in 1991 with the mission to, as Jackson says, “explore ideas that help us re-imagine our politics, culture, and interior lives, without the filter of the dominant culture. That kind of vision remains a radical and vital one today. I’m thrilled we’ll be reanimating that idea and expanding its possibilities to capture the world in its fullness for this moment.” (Publishers Weekly)

U.K. charity organization the Reading Agency launched a campaign today that allows doctors to prescribe novels to teenagers with mental health issues. The Reading Well for Young People campaign provides thirteen- to eighteen-year-olds with recommended reading lists that cover mental health issues, including both nonfiction and fiction titles. (Guardian)

Last night at a ceremony in New York City, the 2016 PEN Literary Award winners were announced. The winners include Ta-Nehisi Coates, who won the $10,000 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Art of the Essay award for Between the World and Me, and Mia Alvar, who won the $25,000 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction for her collection, In the Country (Knopf).

Renowned children’s author Beverly Cleary celebrates her one-hundredth birthday today. Cleary wrote more than thirty books over five decades. Her books have sold eighty-five million copies worldwide. (CNN)

“It’s all about discovery, not preservation.” Poet Phillip B. Williams discusses his writing process and poetics, his work as an editor, and his debut collection, Thief in the Interior (Alice James Books).

In an interview at the Rumpus, poet, translator, and novelist Idra Novey talks about writing in multiple genres, and her novel, Ways to Disappear, which she calls a “love letter to translation.”

Over at Electric Literature, short story writer Rebecca Schiff provides a reading list of contemporary innovators of short-form fiction, from Lorrie Moore to Joy Williams.