The 2020 Jackson Poetry Prize has been awarded to Ed Roberson. “This is an extraordinary time to be awarding this significant prize in poetry, a momentous time in our recent history, a time of panic, fear, uncertainty and inner turmoil, and devastating tragedy where people are separated from one another, cannot even touch or bury loved ones, and yet are bound together inextricably by their vulnerability as humans,” the judges said in a press release. “Poetry such as Ed Roberson’s troubles these meditations, these issues, these apocalyptic queries in innovative expressive ways.”
Over half of the UK’s small publishers are worried they may go out of business by fall due to the coronavirus pandemic, The Bookseller reports. While 85 percent of small publishers reported their sales had dropped by half, 57 percent said they had no cash flow at all.
At The Nation, Victor Pickard explains how the US Postal Service could be saved by expanding to community-level news production.
“Surely it is absurd to claim that a central activity of human life, a territory of feeling and drama, is off-limits to art,” writes Garth Greenwell at The Guardian. “Sex is a uniquely useful tool for a writer, a powerful means not just of revealing character or exploring relationships, but of asking the largest questions about human beings.”
James Patterson is writing a children’s book with Guns N’Roses. Sweet Child O’ Mine, illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin, “follows the adventures of Maya and Natalia Rose, the niece and daughter of Guns N’ Roses manager Fernando Lebeis, who have grown up touring with the band.” The book will be published in September by Jimmy Patterson Books.
