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 Guardian looks at how the economic downturn still affects award-winning authors.
The New York Review of Books discusses W. H. Auden’s secret life of good deeds.
Flavorwire shares twenty little-known facts about Dr. Seuss, including his job for Standard Oil of New Jersey and his invention of the word “nerd.” The children’s book author and illustrator would have celebrated his 110th birthday yesterday.
A New York City first-grader, Blake Ansari, collected six hundred books to create a library for homeless children at a Bronx shelter. (Atlantic)
Writer Sally McGrane tells the story of the allied officers who rescued millions of books along with priceless works of art from the Nazis. (New Yorker)
A new book by Mark Harris discusses the experiences of filmmakers Frank Capra, John Ford, George Stevens, John Huston, and William Wyler during World War II. (New York Times)
While tensions build between Russia and the Ukraine, the London Review of Books reproduces Leon Trotsky’s argument for a free, socialist Ukraine from a piece in 1939’s Socialist Appeal.
Melville House blogger James McQuade weighs in on the spat between British crime author Lynn Shepherd and J. K. Rowling following Shepherd’s decree that Rowling should quit writing.
The CBC begins its annual Canada Reads battle today: five books are pitted against each other in debates to determine the one book that every Canadian must read; books included must have the potential “to change minds, lives and even Canada itself.”
