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:
Earlier this week, six writers withdrew from the annual PEN Literary Gala to protest the organization’s decision to honor Charlie Hebdo with the Freedom of Expression Courage Award. Now, twenty-six more writers, including Joyce Carol Oates and Junot Díaz, have signed a letter of protest. (Guardian)
In response to the recent protests, PEN will host a panel discussion the morning of the gala with Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief, Gérard Biard, and its film critic, Jean-Baptiste Thoret. The discussion will focus on the challenges to freedom of expression and the controversies that have surrounded the publication.
Release your inner bard today! Today is the final day of National Poetry Month as well as Poem in Your Pocket Day. Initiated in 2003 by the City of New York, Poem in Your Pocket Day encourages people to carry poems with them to share with others and read at work, school, and other venues. (Academy of American Poets, NYC.gov)
At the Macomb Correctional Facility outside of Detroit, Michigan, inmates meet weekly to write and discuss poetry in the Writer’s Block workshop. Many of the workshop participants were incarcerated before they turned eighteen and are serving life sentences. (New Yorker)
Katy Waldman reports for Slate about her experience sitting in on the controversial seminar at the University of Pennsylvania called “Wasting Time on the Internet.” The course is taught by conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith, who insists that despite his class’s name, “the redemptive thing about it all is that no matter how hard we try to waste time indefinitely, to be totally spaced out, vacant, mindless, we always make something of it. Mindlessness assumes, demands, spawns mindfulness.”
Following reports that several New York Public Library buildings are in disrepair and in need of funding, author Judy Blume wrote a letter calling upon library patrons to contact the mayor to ask for increased library budgets. (GalleyCat)
Speaking of Judy Blume, the author will headline the Young Adult Fiction Convention in London this summer. Blume’s appearance at the convention honors the fortieth anniversary of her bestselling young adult novel Forever. (Telegraph)
“I’ve written twenty-five operas and there is often a literary basis to them. I just wrote The Trial, based on the Kafka book. I did two operas with Doris Lessing, and am doing a third one based on The Memoirs of a Survivor.” At the New York Times, composer Philip Glass discusses his reading habits and the literary influences on his music.
