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:
Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed legislation levying fines of up to about $1,400 [2] for books, films, television broadcasts, and performances that contain “foul language.” (Telegraph)
Nobel Prize winning writer Wole Soyinka has spoken out against the Nigerian government’s handling of the kidnapping [3] last month of more than two hundred young girls by the Boko Haram terrorist group. (CNN)
One of Philip Roth’s former students, who became a novelist herself, remembers the dashed hopes and unexpected lessons after taking two of the author’s English seminars [4] at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1970s. (New York Times)
With warmer weather on the way, New York City's Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society gets started on a new season of reading in the partial buff [5]. (GalleyCat)
Translator Wu Fu Sheng is embarking on a new project to translate Dylan Thomas’s poetry into Mandarin, [6] marking the first major translation of the poet's work into the Chinese language. (BBC)
Colossal takes a look at a 1692 Dutch book that features nearly eight hundred handwritten and painted pages [7], which was created as an educational text for readers seeking to learn about paint and color techniques.
Meanwhile, the Guardian highlights some of the late Kurt Vonnegut’s abstract doodles [8], which will be collected in a new book forthcoming in June.
Apartment Therapy takes a peek into fifteen bedrooms of well-known writers [9] such as William S. Burroughs, Truman Capote, and Emily Dickinson.