Roxane Gay’s Response to Ferguson, Claudia Rankine’s Urgent Poetry, and More

by
Staff
11.25.14

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:

Last night, a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, declined to indict officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown last August. While Ferguson schools are closed today, the city’s public library will remain open, serving as a haven for the city’s residents and children amid ongoing protests. A book-swap will be held at the facility tonight, and nonresidents can show support by donating to the library. (BBC)

“I am worried because there will be a next time and a next time, and words will still be inadequate. The alternative is silence and silence is unacceptable.” Read author Roxane Gay’s powerful response to the Ferguson verdict and the reactions that followed. (Toast)

Meanwhile, as the Ferguson ruling continues to intensify civil unrest, Claudia Rankine’s poetry collection, Citizen: An American Lyric, feels more urgent than ever. Read poet Tess Taylor’s review of Citizen at NPR. “Rankine shows how dynamics of racial selves are not isolated or even present tense, but also communal, unconscious, historical. This is how you are a citizen, she writes.”

The holidays are fast approaching and bookstores need help. In an effort to boost Barnes & Noble’s Black Friday sales, top authors will distribute signed copies of their latest books to the retailer. Dan Brown, E. L. James, Neil Gaiman, and Hillary Clinton are among the one hundred authors who will participate in this initiative, the New York Times reports.

Conversely, while Barnes & Noble and other booksellers in the United States struggle with declining sales, bookselling in Taiwan is actually going quite well. Bookstores run by the Eslite Group stay open twenty-four hours, and are considered hip places to hang out late at night. (CNN)

The University of Texas in Austin has acquired late Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s archive. Among the archived documents are original manuscripts of Marquez’s classic works One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. Other notable documents include annotated and unpublished works, and nearly 2,000 letters to other writers. (New York Times)

National Novel Writing Month tip of the day: Write what you don’t know. Watch a clip of Toni Morrison and Junot Díaz discussing their writing processes and giving advice on how to take your story in an unfamiliar direction. (GalleyCat)

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