Article Archive

The ninth novel and eighteenth book by Harry Mark Petrakis, who turns 80 on June 5, will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in the same month. Twilight of the Ice is set in the Chicago railyards, in the blue-collar, industrial neighborhoods of the early 1950s. In this elegy to a rough crew of railroad car icemen facing obsolescence in the advent of modern refrigeration, the Chicago author who was twice shortlisted for the National Book Award again finds nobility in the struggles of immigrants and working people.

Careful storytelling, along with careful marketing, has helped American Lives—the memoir series at the University of Nebraska Press—attract the attention of talented authors, national reviewers, and bookstore sales reps.

During the past year, poets laureate have been the unlikely recipients of national media attention. New Jersey's Amiri Baraka was excoriated for reading a poem that some labeled anti-Semitic, and California's Quincy Troupe resigned after inaccuracies were discovered on his resumé. With their public profiles growing, the role of poets laureate is being called into question. In April the nation's first conference for state poets laureate will convene in Manchester, New Hampshire, where they will discuss poetry and their responsibilities as public representatives of their art. 

To coincide with National Poetry Month, the Library of America, a nonprofit publisher of American classics, will launch the American Poets Project, a new series of books devoted to individual poets and anthologies exploring particular themes, genres, and eras. 

In 1995 Brian Henry joined forces with Andrew Zawacki to resurrect Verse magazine. In 2000 he elicited the help of Matthew Zapruder and co-founded Verse Press. Along the way Henry, an assistant professor of English and director of the creative writing program at the University of Georgia, established a broad international reputation, both for his editorial and critical efforts, and for his sizable creative output.

Helon Habila read novels as a boy to shelter himself from the brutal reality of his country’s political instability. Now, the author of Waiting for an Angel believes his generation of Nigerian novelists should help change that reality.

Last spring I embarked on a modest project. Having photocopied 10 of my favorite poems—by poets living and dead, from several different countries—I stapled them into an anthology and stood on a sidewalk in Times Square, where I read the poems aloud. I had no other gimmicks and no amplification. I did this on several occasions, always bringing a friend along for moral support and to assist in handing out free copies of the anthology, which I titled "Antidote."

Naropa University has established the Naropa Audio Preservation and Access Project to archive the program's vast holdings of recorded readings, lectures, panel discussions, and workshops.

Literary MagNet chronicles the start-ups and closures, successes and failures, anniversaries and accolades, changes of editorship and special issues—in short, the news and trends—of literary magazines in America. This issue's MagNet features New Letters, Brick, The Ohio Review, 96 Inc, Poetry Review, Gloss, and Explorations.

Two thousand years after it was destroyed by fire, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina—the mythic Egyptian library that at one time boasted a universal collection of everything ever written—as reopened to the public on October 16.

The task of bringing literature into another language means transporting an entire culture, its shame as well as its triumphs.

Over three hundred poems, short stories, and essays written in response to the events of last September have been collected in three new anthologies: September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets, and 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11.