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:
Michel Houellebecq, the French author whose new and controversial novel Submission was featured on the cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine on the day the magazine offices were attacked, has stopped promotion of the book. The novel depicts a future France led by a Muslim president. Houellebecq has been placed under police protection amid fears of another terrorist attack. (Guardian)
Meanwhile, the surviving journalists of Charlie Hebdo have vowed to keep publishing the magazine and increase its normal print run in the wake of the attacks. “It’s very hard. We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway because stupidity will not win,” stated columnist Patrick Pelloux. (Electric Literature)
San Francisco publishing platform Medium has launched its first digital series of author interviews. Bestselling author Kelly Corrigan hosts the twelve-part series, titled “Foreword,” which she describes as “akin to a late-night graduate school conversation with some of the most interesting and thoughtful people on the planet.” (SF Gate)
At the Atlantic, Kristina A. Bicher discusses the benefits of online college poetry seminars. Bicher notes, however, that these courses are not designed to replace traditional college seminars, and are about “reaching more minds and opening more people to the possibilities of language.”
“Unless we give our students challenging material to dissect, process, and study, how can we expect them to break out of the current poor proficiency ratings and advance beyond a basic reading level?” Annie Homquist found major differences in the middle school reading lists of today and those of one hundred years ago. (GalleyCat)
Bestselling author James Patterson will donate £50,000 to the World Book Day Award; a prize that will help fund school libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland. (Bookseller)
Harvard University Press has published the first five books in the Murty Classical Library of India. The library, which is modeled off of the Loeb Classical Library, will publish five hundred works of pre-1800 Indian texts over the next century. Andrea A. Stranger created the winning cover design for the collection. (New York Times)
