Hanif Kureishi Declares Writing Classes Worthless, the Debate Over Audiobooks, and More

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 today’s stories:

English novelist Hanif Kureishi, who teaches creative writing at Kingston University in London, declares in the Guardian that creative writing programs and classes are a "waste of time."

Memoirist Elisabeth Luard, author of Family Life: Birth, Death and the Whole Damn Thing, reflects on her three stillborn children and what they meant for her later life as a mother of four. (Daily Mail)

Writer Cheryl Strayed visits the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison this evening at 7:30 p.m. (Daily Cardinal)

NPR lists three books to get readers through middle age.

Brooklyn Magazine anticipates five forthcoming or recently published novels by Brooklyn-based women, including Rachel Cantor and Julia Fierro.

Meanwhile, J. D. Daniels of Flaunt decries listicles.

Sam Allingham of the Millionscelebrates audiobooks, while Connor Ferguson of Electric Literature's the Outlet steers readers away from them, citing a Canadian study which finds that people have more difficulty retaining passages when listening than when reading.

In response to Robert McCrum’s recent Guardian article about the effects of the financial downturn on professional writers, Melville Houses’s Zeljka Marosevic asks whether the author, as we know it, is dead.