Kurt Vonnegut's Letter to John F. Kennedy, Ben Percy On Werewolves, and more

by
Melissa Faliveno
5.1.13

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:

In a recently unearthed 1960 letter to John F. Kennedy, Kurt Vonnegut volunteers to work the Massachusetts senator’s presidential campaign. (Slate)

Phillip Roth, who spent much of the 1970s and 1980s doing advocacy work for Eastern European writers affected by the Cold War, has received the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award. (Sacramento Bee)

Benjamin Percy, whose forthcoming werewolf novel, Red Moon, will be released by Grand Central Publishing next week, waxes lupine on his five favorite werewolf tales (Flavorwire). 

While you’re there, check out Emily Temple’s roundup of famous books you didn’t know were censored

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed a book deal with HarperCollins for his memoir. (New York Times)

Meanwhile, Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera’s memoir, The Closer, has been acquired by Little, Brown. (Publishers Weekly)

A scholar in Kent, England, discovered a lost poem by Vita Sackville-West—the English writer most famous for her affair with Virginia Woolfwhen it fell out of a book in Sackville-West’s library. The poem was addressed to another mistress, the writer Violet Trefusis. (The Guardian)

On the topic of discoveries, the Guardian has also revealed that Winnie the Pooh author and pacifist AA Miline was recruited to serve as a secret propaganda writer during World War I.

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Vonnegut’s zany and surreal world reflects the absurdity of our own and really bent my mind to different modes of thinking.  His work has inspired my own visual arts for quite some time and I created a tribute illustration of the author with the help of an old typewriter.  You can see it at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/11/happy-birthday-mr-vonnegut.html  and tell me how his work and words also affected you.