Round-Up: Bookslut, BTBA Winners, and the Intersection of Poetry and Music

From Bookslut’s last issue to the important role poetry and music play in each other’s lives, here’s a look at the latest literary news:

• In March, founder of Bookslut Jessica Crispin announced she’d be stopping publication of the website, which she’s been running since 2002. She recently sat down with Vulture and discussed how the site started, why she decided to stop publishing, and the current landscape of American literature. “I’m proud of the fact that we covered women, work in translation, and writers of color, and we did it without being fussy about it,” Crispin says of Bookslut’s fourteen year run.
• The winners of the ninth annual Best Translated Book Awards were announced last week. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera and translated from Spanish by Lisa Dillman won for fiction and Rilke Shake by Angélica Freitas and translated from Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan won for poetry.
• After the release of Beyoncé’s Lemonade, which features the spoken word poet Warsan Shire, Pitchfork delved into the history of poets and musicians working together. Over at LitHub, Adam Fitzgerald spoke with Tyehimba Jess–-creator of Olio, “a new book length performance of poetry, song, collage and art object, [in which] musical knowledge is channeled back to its source”–-about popular music and poetry.