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:
Yesterday, the Man Booker Foundation announced that the Man Booker International Prize would merge with the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize next year to form an annual award for a single work of fiction translated into English. At the Guardian, Daniel Hahn discusses why the prize reinvention announcement is good news for fiction in translation.
Speaking of fiction in translation, Jay Rubin, fiction writer and longtime translator of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, talks to the Rumpus about the difficulties and pleasures of translating Japanese into English. “I very often feel I’m writing original—almost original—fiction.”
So much depends upon William Carlos Williams’s “Red Wheelbarrow,” and now the true identity of its owner has been discovered. On July 18, a stone will be laid on Thaddeus Marshall’s gravesite in New Jersey, which will credit his contribution to American poetry. (New York Times)
Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist, Nobel laureate, and author of the best-selling book I Am Malala, is celebrating her 18th birthday by launching a social media campaign for education awareness. To urge world leaders to invest more money in education and cut military spending, Yousafzai is asking people to take photos of themselves with books using the hashtag #BooksNotBullets. On her blog, Yousafzai writes, “If a child suffering from poverty and difficulties is not given a book, he will pick up a gun. I call on my sisters and brothers all around the world to join me in this mission.” (Shelf Awareness)
This morning, the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis announced Britt Udesen as its new executive director. Udesen joins the renowned independent literary organization following her tenure as executive director of the Cabin, a literary center based in Boise, Idaho.
Poet and literary critic Stephen Burt discusses the persistence of literary magazines and how to successfully start one. “A new journal needs a reason to exist: a gap that earlier journals failed to fill, a new form of pleasure, a new kind of writing…a program that will actually change some small part of some literary readers’ tastes.” (New Yorker)
The second half of 2015 is, according to the Millions, “straight-up, stunningly chock-full of amazing books.” The site previews eighty-two forthcoming titles to get you excited for the rest of the year.
