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:
To combat the ridicule surrounding the Literary Review’s infamous Bad Sex in Fiction Award, which has been given annually since 1993, the Erotic Review is establishing, yes, a Good Sex in Fiction Award. (Independent)
Margaret Atwood reflects on the dystopias she created in her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as in her recent MaddAddam trilogy, which she says are “the cusp of where we are living right now.” Atwood’s latest novel Hag-Seed, a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is out now from Hogarth. (Guardian)
Speaking of dystopia, Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai discusses his latest novel Báró Wenckheim hazatér (Baron Wenckheim’s Homegoing), as well as the crises of living in humanized nature, and the perplexing notion of feeling “at home” in a place. Krasznahorkai received the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 for his “overall contribution to fiction on the world stage.” (Asymptote)
At NPR, journalist and author Jeff Chang talks about his new book We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation, a collection of essays that examines recent protests and tragedies influenced by race.
Artist Simon Starling’s multimedia project based on poet William Butler Yeats’s 1916 noh-inspired play, At the Hawk’s Well, is on display at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City. Simon Starling: At Twilight (After W. B. Yeats’s Noh Reincarnation) commemorates the centenary of Yeats’s original production by reimagining the play “with newly created masks, costumes, and a dance on video juxtaposed with examples of classical Japanese art and masterpieces of Western Modernism that inspired the new works.” (Hyperallergic)
“Obsessing about how a certain person (or the Internet) will react to something you’ve written can interfere with your vision of the world you’re creating.” Fiction writer Rebecca Kauffman, whose debut novel, Another Place You’ve Never Been, was released last week by Soft Skull Press, considers writers’ promotional tactics and her own resistance to social media. (Publishers Weekly)
Warner Brothers Television is developing a miniseries adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel, The Bonfire of Vanities, which will be distributed by Amazon. Wolfe, however, was unaware of the news. (Hollywood Reporter, Showbiz411)
