Patricia Smith Wins $100,000 Poetry Prize, Frankenstein Facsimiles, and More

by
Staff
2.21.18

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:

Claremont Graduate University has announced the winners of the 2018 Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards. Patricia Smith won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her collection Incendiary Art (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press). Donika Kelly won the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for her debut collection, Bestiary (Graywolf Press).

In more prize news, last night PEN America announced the winners of its 2018 Literary Awards in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and translation.

To mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the first release of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, Frankenstein, SP Books will publish facsimiles of Shelley’s original handwritten manuscript, which includes edits and notes from her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, in March. (Guardian)

Former Brietbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos has dropped his $10 million lawsuit against Simon & Schuster over the publisher’s decision to cancel publication of his memoir, Dangerous, in February 2017. (Associated Press)

Best-selling author Khaled Hosseini, best known for his 2003 novel, The Kite Runner, has revealed that his forthcoming novel is an explicit response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Sea Prayer will be published on September 18 by Riverhead. (Entertainment Weekly)

At Guernica, writer Carmen Maria Machado discusses her story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, queerness, and writing a memoir. “With memoir, there is no place to hide; the screen of fiction is gone and it feels really naked, really vulnerable.”

At Bustle, Alaina Leary argues for better representation of the romantic lives of LGBTQIA+ and disabled characters in contemporary fiction.