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:
Kent Haruf, author of the National Book Award–nominated novel Plainsong, has died at age seventy-one. Haruf wrote several novels set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. Haruf’s U.K. publisher Paul Baggaley noted that his novels “form one of the major achievements of contemporary American fiction, rivaling the great works of Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford, Jane Smiley and Annie Proulx in creating a mythical modern American landscape.” Haruf is survived by his wife and three daughters. (Guardian)
December is the month for holidays, family, and year-end lists. The New York Times has released its one hundred notable books of 2014. Browse the selections for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, which include Richard Flanagan’s Man Booker Prize–winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Louise Glück’s National Book Award–winning poetry collection, Faithful and Virtuous Night.
From notable books to notable people: Publishers Weekly has highlighted several people behind major publishing achievements of 2014. Among those profiled are bestselling author James Patterson, Fiona McCrae of Graywolf Press, and Ellen Oh, cofounder of the “We Need Diverse Books” campaign.
Meanwhile, Veronica Roth, bestselling author of the young adult trilogy Divergent, is backing a campaign that supports First Book, a nonprofit that distributes millions of books to children in need. Roth’s publisher HarperCollins will donate a copy of Divergent for every two dollars and fifty cents given to First Book. (ABC News)
On December 12 at the New York Public Library, Joyce Carol Oates will give this year’s New York Review of Books Robert B. Silvers lecture on the topic of inspiration. (Oates will also read at the Poets & Writers Live event—also themed on inspiration—in San Francisco on January 10.)
As of Cyber Monday, 11,463 people have pledged to join the Amazon Anonymous campaign to avoid shopping through the retailer from December 1 to 25. The anti-Amazon group began the campaign in November, claiming the retailer avoids taxes and does not pay its warehouse workers a living wage. The group says Amazon could stand to miss out on $2.5 million dollars. (Guardian)
According to a Goodreads poll of forty thousand people, readers prefer books written by authors of their own gender. These results come despite the “#readwoman2014 movement,” which Joanna Walsh started early this year as a call to reverse the marginalization of books written by women. (Time)
From gold to…grinds? In the nineteenth century, famed novelist Edith Wharton’s childhood home on West Twenty-Third Street in New York City was considered a “stately new brownstone in the fashionable Madison Square neighborhood,” and served as a perfect backdrop for her novels about the Gilded Age. Now, it’s a Starbucks.
