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 2016 Hong Kong Book Fair has begun, and despite the disappearance of five booksellers last year, independent publishers are selling titles critical of Chinese politics, and other books that would be banned on the mainland. Author Lam Hong-ching, published by the Hong Kong–based press Subculture, said, “People are worried. Some writers don’t even write anymore. Some publishers don’t dare to print…. But it’s even more important to write these books now, otherwise residents are not properly informed.” (Channel News Asia, Washington Post)
CantoMundo, a national organization for Latino poets, is relocating its headquarters from the University of Texas in Austin to Columbia University in New York City. Cofounder Deborah Paredez notes that the move will allow for closer collaboration with New York City–based organizations Cave Canem and Kundiman, which are dedicated to the work of African American and Asian American poetry, respectively. (My Statesman)
Today, PEN America announced the establishment of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, an annual prize of $75,000 for a book in any genre that “reshap[es] the boundaries of its form and signal[s] strong potential for lasting influence.”
Scrivener, a computer program that helps writers compose and structure their novels and other long-form texts, just launched a mobile app for the iPhone and iPad. The original program was established in 2005, and has been widely used by writers participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). (Wired)
“I wanted to write a book with an ambiguous ending, an ending that pushes back against the redemptive narrative we’re all familiar with. There’s this sense that even trauma or suffering will improve our character or will impart some lesson. I wanted a very conscious avoidance of the corrective, to write about the accumulation of life and keep it separate from the impulse to make redemptive meaning.” At Bookforum, Emma Cline talks about her acclaimed debut novel, The Girls.
German sociologist Jens Beckert’s new book, Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics, argues that literary theory and the role of the imagination can help explain capitalist economics. Brooke Harrington writes at the Atlantic, “Beckert asserts that if readers are willing to accept that fiction plays a large role in capitalism, then they need to follow that insight to its logical conclusion by applying to markets the analytical tools developed for studying works of literature.”
You may find it noteworthy, newsworthy, buzzworthy, or groanworthy to consider the rise of the suffix “worthy.” (Wall Street Journal)
