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The Writer's News: February & January 2012 News Nobel Poet Laureate Wislawa Szymborska Dies
In its citation of Szymborska, the Nobel prize committee named her the “Mozart of poetry” with the “fury of Beethoven.” She was a poet who blended humor with seriousness. According to the Associated Press, she was both deeply political and also playful. “Her verse, seemingly simple, was subtle, deep and often hauntingly beautiful,” wrote reporter Monika Scislowska for the AP. “She often used everyday images—an onion, a cat wandering in an empty apartment, an old fan in a museum—to reflect on…love, death, and passing time.” Just last year Szymborska was awarded The Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor. Poems she had been writing and editing up until her death will be published in a collection forthcoming this year. Her most recent collection is 2008’s Here. Source: Associated Press Photo Credit: Anna Baranczak, taken from The Harvard Book Review. Article posted: 02/02/12
AWP Chicago Conference Sold Out! AWP's Annual Conference & Bookfair has sold out. There will be no on-site registration in Chicago. "We are sorry we can't accommodate anymore attendees, but we need to make sure our conference goers have the best possible experience," said Christian Teresi, AWP's Director of Conferences. "We don't like turning folks away, but we have really reached the capacity of what the hotels can handle. For the coming years, we have made arrangements for sites with convention centers that can better handle the spectacular growth in the conference—although it will still be a good idea to register early." The conference will begin February 29, 2012. Approximately 10,000 people have registered for the conference. A total attendance of 11,000 is expected, as a few events, like the Bookfair on Saturday, will be free and open to the public. In 2004, when the conference was also held in Chicago, the total attendance was 4,100 people, so attendance has more than doubled since then. The conference will bring together many of today's most prominent writers, including eight Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, two Poets Laureate, eight National Book Award winners, and nine recipients of the National Book Critics Circle Award, among hundreds of other readers, speakers, and panelists. The conference will feature 400 events, as well as exhibits by more than 550 presses, magazines, and literary arts organizations. Since 2007, a growing caravan of additional literary programming has followed the AWP Conference from city to city. This satellite conference of events (not organized by AWP) provides another 100 events: AWP- 2012 Conference- Off-site Events. "A special ingredient to the growth of the conference," said AWP's Executive Director David Fenza, "has been AWP's partnerships with other literary organizations and presses. Our partners and sponsors have helped us build the biggest and best and most diverse programming possible. When events created by our membership couple with the events developed by our partners, it makes for one mighty and irresistible vortex." The Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts, back in the 1970s, were AWP's first partners in producing the conference. This year, the conference benefits from the help of hundreds of sponsors, partners, and presses. "It's not just AWP's conference. It's a big public square for all of contemporary literature," Fenza said. The next AWP Conference & Bookfiair will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, March 6-9, 2013. Proposals for events for the Boston Conference must be submitted via AWP's website by May 1, 2012. Article posted: 01/26/12
Tree Swenson to Step Down as Executive Director of Academy of American Poets The Academy of American Poets announced today that Tree Swenson is stepping down from her role as Executive Director, following a 10-year tenure at the literary organization. In March, Ms. Swenson will assume the position of Executive Director at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. During her time at the Academy of American Poets, Ms. Swenson has overseen the creation of many important programs, including Poetry & the Creative Mind (2003), Poem in Your Pocket Day (2004), an outdoor reading series in New York City parks (2005), digitization of the Academy's Audio Archive (2007), the Poets Forum (2007), and the Poem-a-Day email series (2010), which is hosted on the Academy's enormously popular website Poets.org. Raised in Montana, Ms. Swenson lived in California before settling in 1972 in Port Townsend, Washington, where she co-founded Copper Canyon Press and was publisher and executive director for the next 20 years. She moved to Boston in 1993, where she was the director of programs for the Massachusetts Cultural Council before joining the Academy of American Poets on April 1, 2002. Of Ms. Swenson's departure, Board Chairman Eunice J. Panetta said, "In her decade of distinguished service to the Academy of American Poets, Tree Swenson has carried forward the Academy's tradition of programmatic innovation, expanding audiences for our extraordinary poetic heritage, and enriching the conversation in our vibrant world of contemporary poetry. She has been a dedicated leader with a luminous spirit and an inspiration to all of us who love poetry. We wish her well in her future endeavors." Ms. Swenson said, "Long before I moved to New York to lead the organization, I believed (and continue to believe today) that the Academy of American Poets was the premier literary organization in the country, and I am grateful beyond measure to have had this decade to contribute to it. Believing as I do in the power of change and renewal, I know that this is the right time for the Academy to open its next chapter, and for me to return to the Northwest and my roots. My time at the Academy of American Poets has been profound and intense, moving and rewarding, and these ten years have sped by." Beth Harrison, the Academy's Associate Director, has assumed the role of Acting Executive Director, with Ms. Swenson serving as a Senior Advisor to the Academy through early April. Ms. Harrison has worked at the Academy since 2001. The Board of Directors has convened a search committee, chaired by Michael Jacobs, to carry out a national search for a successor. The Academy of American Poets is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1934 to foster appreciation for contemporary poetry and to support American poets at all stages of their careers. For nearly four generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, Poets.org, the Poetry Audio Archive, American Poet magazine, and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. The Academy also awards prizes to accomplished poets at all stages of their careers—from hundreds of student prizes at colleges nationwide to the Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement in the art of poetry. For more information, visit www.poets.org. Press Release from Poets.org posted: 01/23/12 Tree Swenson is a former President of the AWP Board of Directors
Jane Hirshfield, Toi Derricotte, and Arthur Sze Become Newest Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets On January 17, 2012, Tree Swenson, Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets, announced that Jane Hirshfield, Toi Derricotte, and Arthur Sze were elected to the AAP’s Board of Chancellors. They were elected by the current Board, which includes fifteen of America’s most distinguished poets, such as Lyn Hejinian, Kay Ryan, Carl Phillips, Mark Doty, and Sharon Olds. The Board of Chancellors elects recipients for the Wallace Stevens Award and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. In the words of the Academy’s founder, Marie Bullock, the Chancellors are “known for their good judgment and eminent integrity of opinion. They should geographically represent the entire United States… and not one trend of thought, or literary clique, or section.” Hirshfield, who currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations as well as the AAP’s fellowship, was described by Kay Ryan as “a writer who demonstrates in every possible way that this life matters.” Derricotte, co-founder of Cave Canem and Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, was described by Chancellor Gerald Stern as “a deeply courageous, open and wise poet, a master of the lyric.” Sze is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and author of eight books of poetry. Chancellor Naomi Shihab Nye said, “(his) work has long been a nourishing tonic for the mind. Sze’s ongoing generous exchange with Asian poets…enriches the canon of world poetry immeasurably.” For more information about the Academy and its members, visit http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22748. Article posted: 01/20/12
Reading Fiction is Good for You A study performed in 2006 shows that readers of fiction tend to have higher “emotional intelligence.” Reading fiction improves emotional awareness, empathy, and, more broadly, social skills. In a recent blog post by Anne Kremer for the Harvard Business Review, this study was brought up in order to draw conclusions about success in the workplace and in society attributed to stronger “theory of mind,” which is defined by a person’s ability to read and react to another person’s perspective. In a recent blog post for the Harvard Business Review, Anne Kremer referred to this study in order to draw conclusions about success in the workplace and in society based on a stronger “theory of mind,” which is defined by a person’s ability to readand react to another person’s perspective. The study, done by Keith Oatley, a cognitive psychologist, and Raymond Mar of York University, aimed to show that reading fiction improved the subject’s social skillfulness. Precisely, reading activates and develops neuronal pathways in the brain that noticeably assists the reader in acquiring a better understanding of human expression. “It’s when we read fiction that we have the time and opportunity to think deeply about the feelings of others,” says Kremer, “really imagining the shape and flavor of alternate worlds of experience.” She adds that experiencing a different set of emotions by a well-developed character in a novel make her more adept at recognizing them in a real person. Kremer calls this “nourishing empathy.” Read the full post, which goes further into explaining the usefulness of being an avid consumer of fiction: http://blogs.hbr.org/...the_business_case_for_reading.../. Article posted: 01/20/12
The First Montreal Poetry Prize Goes to Mark Tredinnick
“This is a bold, big-thinking poem, in which ancient themes (especially the theme of our human relationship with landscape) are re-cast and rekindled,” said Motion. “It well deserves its eminence as a prize winner.” Tredinnick, author of several collections of poetry and prose, lives and works near Sydney, Australia. His most recent collections of poetry are The Lyrebird and Body Copy, which is forthcoming. “This prize celebrates the making of poetry everywhere, in particular all the shortlisted poems,” said Mark Tredinnick. “It’s a huge delight and an honour I’ll try to keep living up to in my writing.” Follow the link to read Tredinnick’s poem and view the shortlist, which will make up a forthcoming global anthology: http://montrealprize.com/competition/2011-montreal-prize-winner/. Photo credit: Vicki Frerer Article posted: 01/06/12
Unemployment Tougher on Arts Graduates A new study from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce states that the rate of success in the current job market is related to one’s major in college. With the unemployment rate for recent college graduates at a depressing 8.9%, the study looked to answer this question: Is it still worth it to go to college? Their answer, after exhaustive research that didn’t necessarily provide any newfound confidence in higher education, was unequivocally yes, of course. But what the study discovered was that Arts majors face a much higher jobless rate, 11.5%, than most others. The good news is that overall unemployment for people with graduate degrees is only 3%. The study went on to say that undergraduate majors geared toward creating technology rather than using it were more likely to get jobs and higher salaries. The general trend for higher unemployment rates leans toward nontechnical majors like Social Sciences and Arts. The worst rate of unemployment, 13.9%, occurs for Architecture graduates. Median salary for recent Arts graduates is $30,000 compared to $55,000 for Engineering grads. Read the full report, in summary or in full, at Article posted: 01/06/12
Carol Ann Duffy Wins Costa Poetry Award
The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, are given to the year’s best First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry, and Children’s book. The winners in each genre move on to consideration for the Costa Book of the Year, worth an additional £30,000. In a review of The Bees from The Guardian back in November 2011, Kate Kellaway cited Duffy for having “such remarkable gifts as a poet of grace, dexterity, and clarity. And there are poems here that are unforced and beautiful: gifts.” See the rest of the Costa Book Award winners here: http://www.costabookawards.com/. And read Kellaway’s review here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/06/carol-ann-duffy-bees-review. Photo credit to Manchester Metropolitan University Article posted: 01/06/12
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