The 2021 MacArthur “Genius” Grants have been announced. Among the twenty-five awardees are writers Hanif Abdurraqib, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Nicole R. Fleetwood, and Don Mee Choi. LitHub asked some of the literary awardees to share writing advice they have found helpful in their work. Poet Don Mee Choi said, “‘You can’t be afraid.’ This is basically what I tell myself all the time.”
The New York Times Book Review takes stock of classic works of literature that were panned in the paper’s pages when the books were first published. Among the unfortunates were Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, and E. M. Forster’s Howards End, and more than one novel by Henry James.
Duke University Press highlights the first nine titles in their Black Outdoors series, which launched in 2020. Books from this series are all 50 percent off through October 15.
The editors of Columbia Journalism Review have compiled a “kill list,” with examples, of practices they’d like to see retired from political journalism. First on the list is “Platforming disinformation in the name of ‘balance,’” followed by “Covering international elections in American political terms” and “Panels that flatten real ideological divides into entertainment.”
The Literary Arts Emergency Fund—which was launched last year in response to the pandemic by the Academy of American Poets, the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, and the National Book Foundation—is providing a second round of emergency funding for publishers and literary organizations. The application for grant money will open in November and close in January.