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:
“We are killing ourselves, and we are killing the most vulnerable ones among us, the ones who felt that bullet all their lives, whether it hit the mark or not.” At Literary Hub, poet and author Eileen Myles writes about Orlando, gun control, and the LGBT community.
Meanwhile, at the American Library Association’s annual conference, which kicked off in Orlando on Friday, author and political commentator Michael Eric Dyson spoke of the city’s recent tragedy, and the importance of education and literacy in creating a more tolerant, inclusive society. (Publishers Weekly)
“Sterling is an old-fashioned gentleman, and Lawrence is really an anarchist.” The New York Times profiles legendary poet, author, and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and his longtime agent, Sterling Lord. Ferlinghetti, 97, is at work on an autobiographical novel—the “closest thing to memoir” he’ll ever write—which Lord, 96, has been requesting for nearly two decades.
Fiction writer Lorrie Moore explores recent biographies of former Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Helen Gurley Brown, and the legacy of the “Modern Single Woman.” (New York Review of Books)
At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Liesl Schillinger talks with Don Bartlett, the translator of Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume autobiographical novel, My Struggle.
“She made it clear that the body is not a stable foundation for gender expression.” The Cut looks at the work and cultural influence of writer and radical theorist Judith Butler, whose 1990 breakthrough book Gender Trouble helped pave the way for today’s understanding of gender identity and performativity.
“I feel wearied and sad. I think I will feel scared soon.” More writers weigh in on Brexit, Britain’s recent decision to leave the European Union. (n+1)
Michael Herr, whose coverage of the Vietnam War for Esquire—and later in his book Dispatches—redefined the genre of war reporting, died last week after what his publisher said was a long illness. He was 76. (NPR)
