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:
The shortlist for the U.K.’s twenty-third annual Bad Sex in Fiction award has been announced. Among the finalists for the award, which celebrates “the most egregious passage of sexual description in a work of fiction,” are Erica Jong’s Fear of Dying, Lauren Groff’s Fates & Furies, and British musician Morrissey’s debut novel, List of the Lost. The winner will be announced December 1. (BBC News)
Isis Books & Gifts, a bookstore in Denver, Colorado, has become the target of misguided vandalism as of late by people who associate its name with the ISIS terrorist group. (KDVR.com)
The New York Public Library has acquired the entirety of the New York Review of Books archives, which approximates to “three thousand linear feet of manuscript material—including correspondence with authors, drafts of articles, and more.” The materials date back to the New York Review of Books’ founding in 1963. (nypl.org)
A 1976 letter that author Germaine Greer wrote to novelist Martin Amis—which details their affair and was never actually sent—may be published in the near future. Melbourne University Press intends to release the thirty-thousand-word letter as a slim book, despite the fact that, Greer, who has indicated the letter was never meant for public view, has not given the publisher consent. The letter was found among documents that were sold to the University of Melbourne in 2013. (Guardian)
Pop star Taylor Swift has partnered with Scholastic Books to donate twenty-five thousand books to New York City schools in need. (Electric Literature)
At NPR, Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell discusses genre-bending, using social media as a vehicle for storytelling, and his new novel, Slade House.
Tonight, the winners of the sixty-sixth annual National Book Awards will be announced in the categories of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and young people’s literature. Viewers can livestream the awards ceremony, which begins at 7:40PM Eastern. During the ceremony, the National Book Foundation will present lifetime achievement awards to James Patterson and Don DeLillo.
