Secrets of Indy Lit Success, Writers Respond to Romney, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
9.21.12

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:

With the marriage of wealth and politics in the news, Byliner spotlights several essays concerning the well-heeled, including one by novelist Walter Kirn on financier Warren Buffett from the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, Lapham's Quarterly looks at the political novel, including Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, among others.

In response to Mitt Romney's controversial remarks at a Florida fundraiser, writers are composing open letters to the presidential candidate, including poet and children's book author Laurel Snyder. (We Represent the 47 Percent)

The Brooklyn Book Festival is this Sunday, and Brooklyn magazine reveals the secrets of indy lit success.

David Skinner’s The Story of Ain’t details a decades-old controversy surrounding the creation of Webster’s Third dictionary, which John McWhorter believes is relevant today, as the "language wars continue." (New Republic)

The New York Public Library has revised plans to relocate most of its books from its main Fifth Avenue branch, which is a center of research for scholars and writers. (New York Times)

"If poetries are always already ideological, it doesn’t follow that the ideologies of any body of writing, or any way of writing, is fixed." Joshua Weiner examines Charles Bernstein’s new essay collection, Attack of the Difficult Poems. (Los Angeles Review of Books)

"My little apartment in the Latin Quarter is on the Street of the Iron Pot (rue Pot de Fer), which I’ve renamed Street of the Iron Poet." Jackson Poetry Prize winner Henri Cole is blogging from Paris. (New Yorker)