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:
The Poetry Society of America (PSA) has elected Kimiko Hahn as the organization’s new president. Hahn, who has served on the PSA’s Board of Governors since 2007, is the author of nine poetry collections and has received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Voelcker Award, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Hahn succeeds Ruth Kaplan, who has held the position since 2007.
Fiction and nonfiction writer Roxane Gay’s 2014 novel, An Untamed State, is to be adapted for film. Gina Prince-Bythewood will direct, and Gay will cowrite the screenplay. (Variety)
At the New York Review of Books, Michael Scammell writes about the publication history of Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon, and how the recent discovery of the original German manuscript has made it “not only possible, but in my view imperative, that someone undertake a new translation that will communicate the book’s artistic qualities more accurately and offer a richer and more nuanced account of Koestler’s complex narrative.”
While researching Franz Kafka for his three-volume biography, Reiner Stach published Is That Kafka?: 99 Finds, a collection of curiosities he discovered. Editor and translator Jeffrey Zuckerman delves into Stach’s “beautiful display of unexpected wonders and curiosities” at the New Republic.
“The computer, placing priority on the pursuit of its own joy, stopped working for humans.” That sentence ends a short novel that advanced past the first stage of a literary contest in Japan—a novel cowritten by a robot. (Los Angeles Times)
Signature Reads lists five books from the pre-modern era by women who contribted to the development of first-wave feminism.
“My model for writing fiction is to replicate the feeling of a dream in some way.” Daniel Clowes discusses his decades-long career as a graphic novelist, his writing process, and his latest book, Patience. (Longreads)
