Remembering Fuentes, Simic on Writing Poetry & More

Evan Smith Rakoff rounds up news from our homeland, the republic of letters for Poets & Writers:

Famed novelist Carlos Fuentes passed away Tuesday in Mexico City. He was eighty-three; the Guardian looks at the legacy of the great John Updike; a former pharmaceutical executive, Andrew G. Bodnar, convicted of a white-collar crime, was sentenced to write a book; and other news. 

"I deeply lament the death of our beloved and admired Carlos Fuentes, a universal Mexican writer," wrote President Felipe Calderon via Twitter. The famed novelist, who built the foundation for a resurgence of Spanish literature in the 1960s, died Tuesday in Mexico City. He was eighty-three. (New York Times).

Mother's Day Reading, Lorca's Mysterious Lover & More

Stories about poets & writers around the world, curated by Evan Smith Rakoff for P&W, late for Mother's Day to be sure. Waste not, want not. I'm going through drafts, this one for Mother's Day but not used (I went with the story about dictators with mommy issues because that's the kind of mood I was in.)

Radio Free Europe explains how an obscure nineteenth-century Kazakh poet, Abai, has become an unlikely symbol of the protests opposing Putin's return to power in Russia; Forbes features Jeff Mayersohn, the person who saved Harvard Bookstore from oblivion; the Guardian reports that the mysterious lover Federico García Lorca directed his sonnets has been revealed; and other news.

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know.

Here are the day's stories. Enjoy: no telling when I'll get around to more: