Bahraini Woman Poet Goes on Trial, Remembering Marilyn the Reader, and More

by Staff
6.2.11

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:

On the occasion of her eighty-fifth birthday, Jacket Copy remembers Marilyn Monroe the reader. At the time of her death, Monroe's library, catalogued on LibraryThing, included The Portable Chekhov, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Camus's The Fall, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

Twenty-year-old Bahraini poet Ayat al-Gormezi, incarcerated in March for reading a poem critical of her country's government at a Pearl Square protest, goes on trial today. (Independent)

An unexpectedly high turnout for Los Angeles's LeaLA Spanish-language book fair reveals an overlooked demand for titles in Spanish. (National Public Radio)

After a brief status hearing yesterday, parties working toward an agreement on the Google book-scanning settlement are given another sixty days to negotiate. (Publishers Weekly)

Private equity firm Gores Group is in talks to buy two hundred Borders outlets. (MarketingDaily)

Meanwhile, Australia's nine remaining Borders stores will all close, eliminating jobs for 315 workers. (Bookseller and Publisher)

After his Fox News breakup, Glenn Beck plugs into a new medium, with plans to launch a fiction and nonfiction imprint at Simon & Schuster. (Crain's)

Philadelphia literary magazine Apiary ventures into television with Apiary Mixtape. The program, which debuts tomorrow on public access channel PhillyCAM, features magazine contributors representing "such a cool moment in Philly literature." (Newsworks)