Remembering Wislawa Szymborska and Dorothea Tanning, Paul Auster's War of Words, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
2.2.12

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:

Nobel prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska has passed away in her native Poland. (Guardian)

Meanwhile, the last of the Surrealist artists, Dorothea Tanning, who turned her attention to writing and publishing poetry late in life, died yesterday at her home in New York City. (New York Times)

The Authors Guild has posted an essay arguing that “the abandoning of New Deal era protections of retailers” has aided Amazon's domination of the book business. (GalleyCat)

Paul Auster's new book, Winter Journal, has been released in Turkey. Recently, Auster cited Turkish human rights abuses in an interview with a Turkish newspaper, which sparked a war of words between the New York City novelist and the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, who called Auster “an ignorant man.” (New York Times)

Laura Miller at Salon reminds readers "stories don't need morals or messages."

Open Letters Monthly examines the hidden life of Virginia Woolf's institutionalized half-sister, Laura Makepeace Stephen, who was the grandchild of Victorian novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. On Laura's third birthday, the poet Robert Browning gave her Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem "Aurora Leigh" inscribed, “With all good Christmas wishes to Laura Makepeace Stephen from Robert Browning." Despite auspicious beginnings, Laura lived most of her years in isolation.

Today marks the anniversaries of the birth of James Joyce as well as the full-length publication of Joyce's Ulysses, released in France on his birthday in 1922. (OUPblog)

Gothamist reports a miniature brownstone library is coming to Brooklyn, New York. (If that sparks your interest, check out our video featuring the Corner Library, a community-sponsored lending library in New York City.)