Writers’ Protests Save Liverpool’s Libraries, National Readathon Day, and More

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:

Long live Liverpool libraries! After Liverpool’s city funding cuts threatened the closure of eleven of the city’s eighteen libraries, over 500 writers and artists joined together in protest. The group included poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Caitlin Moran, Jonathon Coe, and many others. Rallies, banners, “love letters to Liverpool libraries,” and other demonstrations generated nationwide support, and resulted in yesterday’s announcement from Liverpool’s mayor Joe Anderson that all eighteen libraries will stay open. (Guardian)

Richard Flanagan’s Man Booker prize–winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, is one of eight books shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year award. The shortlist also includes Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction last week. The Waterstones winner will be announced on December 2. (Bookseller)

Spoiler Alert: Noah Berlatsky does not appreciate spoiler alerts. In an essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Berlatsky suggests that the insistence of spoiler-free criticism is itself a form of censorship, as it devalues criticism as an art and instead moves it towards simplistic fan marketing.

The annual Comic Arts Brooklyn festival took place last weekend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The festival, organized by independent comics bookstore Desert Island, featured exhibitions and panel discussions from independent and self-published comic book writers and illustrators. (Publishers Weekly)

National Novel Writing Month is well underway. Writing 50,000 words in one month is no easy feat, so head over to Writers Digest for support and advice for overcoming writer’s block from a selected group of NaNoWriMo participants.

Penguin Random House, GoodReads, Mashable, and the National Book Foundation have teamed up for National Readathon Day, which is set to take place on January 25, 2015. Proceeds from the Readathon will go towards the literacy efforts of the National Book Foundation. (Penguin Random House)

The art of secret writing is now revealed at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Decoding the Renaissance, an exhibit on view today through February 26, 2015, features ciphered Renaissance inventions, books, and artwork, as well as an introduction to code-breaking methods pioneered by U.S. government cryptanalyst William F. Friedman. (Washington Post)

“When your power is limited, when you cannot vote, when your opinions and contributions are dismissed solely because of your gender, then the disgrace of witnessing your own people butcher and be butchered must not only cause you to revisit everything you assumed about human nature but also asks you to view it from the distance of the outsider.” In his introduction for a new Italian translation of Virginia Woolf’s novel, To the Lighthouse, author Hisham Matar explores the various reasons behind Woolf’s narrative distance. (New Yorker)