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:
Australian author Colleen McCullough, who wrote the bestselling 1977 novel The Thorn Birds, passed away today at age seventy-seven. The former neurophysiologist wrote over twenty novels in her lifetime, and The Thorn Birds has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. (New York Times)
Eighteenth-century Enlightenment writer Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance is currently a bestseller in France. The book, which was published in 1763, has been climbing the Amazon, FNAC, and French bookseller Gilbert Joseph lists since the January 7 attacks at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris. The Treatise “stemmed from Voltaire’s conviction that religious differences were at the heart of world strife.” (U.S. News)
January 31 marks the centenary of poet and Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s birth, and celebratory events have been planned around the world. (Melville House)
Fatima Naoot, a prominent Egyptian poet, is facing up to three years in prison over a Facebook post in which she criticized several Muslim practices, including the slaughter of animals at a Muslim festival. Naoot has been charged with “contempt of Islam, spreading sectarian strife, and disturbing public peace.” (GulfNews)
“So much depends / upon” a poem to preserve multilingualism. Ashford King, a student at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute, has taken on the project of translating William Carlos Williams’s famous poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” into one hundred and forty-two languages.
Author Jeff VanderMeer has agreed to publish three novels in one year. VanderMeer documents this literary journey at the Atlantic.
“The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities.” Historian Yuval Noah Harari’s new book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, examines human history and our singular trait of telling stories. (Smithsonian)
