Writers' Newsletter
Issue #254
May 2024
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News |
Some of this month's news for writers from around the web.
New Irish literary magazine ‘Ragaire’ to be launched in Galway
advertiser.ie – Wednesday May 15, 2024
Ragaire, a new Irish literary magazine championing inventive and imaginative writing, encouraging readers to explore new pathways in poetry and prose, will be launched in Galway.
The first issue of Ragaire Literary Magazine, founded by Galway natives Cormac Culkeen (North Galway ), Tara O’Malley (Connemara ) and Aileen McCarthy (Galway City ), will be launched in The PorterShed, Market Street, Galway City, on Friday, May 24 at 6:30pm. There will be a selection of readings at the event from contributors to the debut issue.
‘Ragaire’ is an old Irish word for a person who enjoys late-night wandering and exploring. It embodies the new magazine’s determination to break the mould in the field of Irish literary publications.
“We want to find and promote writers who travel the road less taken and literary work that contains something different in content, structure or form,” says Cormac Culkeen. “We want our magazine to be a light for those travellers, a place to bring their poems and stories, those lines of life.”
The first issue contains 10 short stories and 28 poems, and was drawn from around 800 submissions. It contains work by Galway and Irish writers like Fred Johnston and Neil McCarthy, as well as a host of international writers from across the globe. The collection concludes with ‘Two Poets On The Go Bus’, a tribute to the late poet, critic and activist, Kevin Higgins, by Galway writer Attracta Fahy.
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Expand your mind with a new magazine of psychedelic art and literature
lithub.com – Monday May 13, 2024
Are you ready to take a trip?
Elastic, a biannual print magazine of psychedelic art and literature that will debut in spring 2025, aims to publish art and writing that’s “immersive, dreamlike, daring, genre- and time-bending, and that acts to expand the mind and the vast possibilities of narrative.”
Founding editor-in-chief Hillary Brenhouse was previously the editorial director of Bold Type Books and editor-in-chief of Guernica magazine. She’ll be joined by editor Meara Sharma, formerly the editor-in-chief of Adi magazine, and a body of contributing editors and artists that includes Jaquira Diaz, Amanda Gunn, Laura van den Berg, Jia Sung, Amber Sparks, and Darian Longmire. The magazine is being supported in part by grants from UC Berkeley and Harvard as part of their Psychedelics in Society and Culture initiative.
Writers' Handbook 2025 - Out Now!
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WME Acquires Ross Yoon Agency in Expansion of Literary Talent Portfolio
msn.com – Monday May 13, 2024
Endeavor Group Holdings Inc.’s WME announced today it has acquired Ross Yoon Agency.
The Washington D.C.-based agency, Ross Yoon, specializes in literary and commercial nonfiction including memoir, biography, history, popular science, business and psychology. In addition, the literary agency’s president Gail Ross and principal Howard Yoon will join WME as partners.
The current Ross Yoon clients will join WME’s roster — the new clientele will include Ross Yoon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and authors, business, non-profit leaders, doctors, scientists, academics, politicians and media personalities.
Ross Yoon joins WME’s 40-year-old book department, which includes a clientele of best-selling and award-winning fiction and nonfiction authors. Most recently in 2022, WME had over 50 New York Times bestsellers and closed nearly 1,000 international publishing deals.
“This acquisition is a natural evolution of WME’s long history of representing best-selling authors and helping bring their visions to life across platforms,” said WME co-chairmen Christian Muirhead and Richard Weitz. “We are proud that after so many hugely successful independent years Gail and Howard chose WME as their partner in this next phase of growth.”
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Listings |
A selection of the new listings added to firstwriter.com this month.
New Literary Agent Listing: Donya Dickerson
firstwriter.com – Wednesday May 15, 2024
Focuses primarily on nonfiction in the categories of business, personal development, self-help, pop culture, science, technology, history, and parenting. She is looking for breakthrough thinking, experts with a fresh voice, and new approaches to solving the problems people face daily. She is especially drawn to books that help others be their best self and succeed in both their professional and personal lives. She is based in New York.
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Articles |
Some of this month's articles for writers from around the web.
How sci-fi writer JG Ballard's computer poems predicted ChatGPT
bbc.com – Saturday May 11, 2024
In the 1970s, science fiction writer JG Ballard was intrigued by the growing capabilities of computers – so used one to compose poems. They were a first step on the road to ChatGPT.
The novelist and short story writer JG Ballard, is known for conjuring warped and reimagined versions of the world he occupied. Dealing with strange exaggerations of realities and often detailing the breakdown of social norms, his unconventional works are hard to categorise.
Sitting on the edge of reality, these unsettling visions often provoked controversy. Eschewing a science-fiction of the distant future, Ballard described his own work as being set in "a kind of visionary present".
Today, as we contemplate generative AI writing texts, composing music and creating art, Ballard's visionary present yet again has something prescient and fresh to tell us.
In an interview from 2004, the author Vanora Bennett suggested to Ballard that he writes about "what is just about to happen in a given community". Asked about what "kind of real-life event" inspired the ideas in his fiction Ballard responded:
I just have a feeling in my bones: there's something odd going on, and I explore that by writing a novel, by trying to find the unconscious logic that runs below the surface and looking for the hidden wiring. It's as if there are all these strange lights, and I'm looking for the wiring and the fuse box.
The topics in Ballard's fiction frequently reveal just how highly attuned he was to the subtleties of the emerging technological and social shifts that were, as he puts it, just below the surface. The fuse box of society was often rewired in his ideas.
And with generative AI there is undoubtedly something odd going on, to which Ballard's attention seems to have been drawn long before it even happened.
BookTok’s influence on publishing is set to last
ft.com – Tuesday May 7, 2024
The bursting of the pandemic sales bubble has been sharp and painful for sectors such as online retail. In publishing, an unlikely source — social media — has helped avoid a hard landing.
Social media should, in theory, be an enemy of the publishing industry given the competing pressures on consumers’ time. Since the pandemic, though, it has produced growth for once-niche genres such as fantasy and propelled authors who were little known to mainstream audiences on to bestseller lists. This will not be a fleeting phenomenon.
BookTok is a community within the video app TikTok in which influencers post content such as reviews of their favourite books. Similar groups can be found on YouTube or Instagram. Yet it is BookTok that has shaken up the sometimes fusty literary world, turbocharging sales of authors such as Sarah J Maas, Colleen Hoover and Alice Oseman among younger readers.
New to Your Public Persona? Handling the Non-Writing Parts of Being an Author
sfwa.org – Tuesday May 7, 2024
Who are you?
No, not in a “name, rank, and serial number” kind of way or the physical parts on display. Not the broad character traits you associate with yourself, either. It’s a complicated question, right? It can be hard to define, even to yourself, much less others. In fact, just about everyone you’ve interacted with has probably seen you as a slightly different person than everyone else has.
This isn’t a bad thing, far from it. Who you are to a specific person or group, your persona, or a tailored version of your personality can be a powerful tool.
You’re more than what you seem
When interacting with the public, be it fans, casual readers, haters, publishers, editors, or whoever, you will be acting as a version of yourself, whether you know it or not. Being aware of this allows polishing this version to be more effective for the type of interaction taking place.
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