ONE OF THE CHALLENGES OF PUTTING TOGETHER THIS issue’s feature on literary agents, “Four Lunches and a Breakfast: What I Learned About the Book Business While Breaking Bread With Five Hungry Agents” (page 49), was transcribing the interviews that ser

That night, bellydown on the hardwood, your face resting on a pillow, you asked me to scrape your back. I knelt beside you, peeled your black T-shirt over your shoulders, unhooked your bra. Having done this hundreds of times by now, my hands moved on

Leah Naomi Green of Greensboro, North Carolina, won the 2019 Walt Whitman Award for The More Extravagant Feast. She received $5,000; a six-week all-expenses-paid residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy; and publication of her book

POETS & WRITERS MAGAZINE ANNOUNCES application information for writers conferences, literary festivals, residencies, and colonies of interest to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. Applications for the following events are due sh

ALLPOETRY.COM—Join the largest poetry community, more than 500,000 poets strong. From beginners to experts, get friendly encouragement and detailed critiques when you’re ready. No-fee contests, $50 cash prizes, active discussion forums, and join our

“Even in death the boys were trouble.” The Nickel Boys (Doubleday, July 2019) by Colson Whitehead. Ninth book, seventh novel. Agent: Nicole Aragi. Editor: Bill Thomas. Publicist: Michael Goldsmith. “Just two years shy of thirty, Patsy has nothing to

In 1992 editor Margaret Busby compiled Daughters of Africa, a landmark anthology of writing by women of African descent. Twenty-seven years later, Busby has put together a follow-up anthology, New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Wr

In February novelist Jonathan Lethem joined Bill Henderson, founder of the Pushcart Press, to launch a series of reissues of Lethem’s favorite forgotten books, starting with Bad Guy, a 1982 absurdist psychodrama by Rosalyn Drexler. W. W. Norton, Push

“A poem can exist in a specific cultural or emotional moment, but it can also sustain and be revisited over and over again,” says poet Adam Deutsch, the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books (www.cooperdillon.com), a ten-year-old press dedicated to “the v

In her debut essay collection, When You Learn the Alphabet (University of Iowa Press, April), Kendra Allen blends personal anecdote and cultural commentary in poems and short essays that address race, gender, and family. “I just really want readers t

This summer Alice Quinn will step down as the executive director of the Poetry Society of America (PSA), a position she has held for the past eighteen years. During her tenure, the PSA launched multiple new poetry prizes, organized hundreds of events