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:
Eighty thousand books worth about seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars have been seized since October from Ugandan bookstores and printers as part of a government crack-down on copyright infringement. (Melville House)
After being assaulted last week at a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, Colum McCann, who is known for subscribing to what he calls "radical empathy," spoke to the New York Times about the attack. “I’m not going to say I’m going to turn around and love my enemy," McCann said. "I don’t necessarily have any empathy for him."
Kensington Publishing has signed a five-year agreement expanding the independent publisher’s sales and distribution with Penguin Random House. (Publishers Weekly)
After accusations surfaced recently that four store managers had been fired for organizing a vote to unionize, owners of the New York City–based independent bookstore Book Culture have rehired the employees. A fifth employee and union organizer, Casey McNamara, was not rehired. (Gothamist, Columbia Daily Spectator)
Meanwhile, New York City’s Brazenhead Books, a bookstore run out of the Upper East Side apartment of Michael Seidenberg, is likely to close after a recent announcement that the owner has lost his lease. (Shelf Awareness)
In a new column for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Dorothea Lasky interviews other poets about poetry and politics. The first installment features an interview with Cassandra Gillig.
The Wall Street Journal considers the big books readers tackle during the summer, crunching the numbers on how many will finish Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, among others.
After slipping into temporary obscurity, the work of eighty-six-year-old Australian novelist Elizabeth Harrower has seen a recent surge in popularity. The author’s four previous novels have been republished, and a new novel, In Certain Circles, was released recently in her home country. (Guardian)
