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:
Seven former Borders employees are in the process of opening a new store in their old Borders location. (Shelf Awareness)
Public libraries report a steep increase in e-book requests. (Library Journal)
Charles Frazier speaks with the hosts of the Guardian's audio book club about his bestselling first novel, Cold Mountain. For the first six months he worked on the manuscript, Frazier says, he'd intended to write a short, violent book. (The author also recounts saving his wife from a bear.)
The New York Times yesterday profiled Sarah McNally, the savvy owner of McNally Jackson Books in New York City. McNally discusses growing up in a bookstore, her time wandering across Africa, and the success of the store's Espresso Book Machine, which can download, print, and bind a paperback in minutes. At the bookstore, sales are 16 percent ahead of last year.
National Public Radio explores why a library would intentionally destroy a book.
Writer Jami Attenberg reveals her obsession with a neighborhood coffee shop's free bookshelf that holds copies of her novels: "And so, while the feisty protesters occupied Wall Street, and our armed forces served our country so admirably in foreign lands, and all over the world every minute doctors and nurses saved lives, I stalked my own books for five days." (New York Times)
On the heels of the Reykjavik International Poetry Festival, Harriet reports on radical poetry in Iceland.
A group of poets and performers have established an intimate reading series, "The Revival," held in the parlors of private homes in places like Chicago; Philadelphia; and Brooklyn, New York. Bed-Stuy Patch writes, "The night is as bohemian as it gets, except for the $20 cover charge and cash bar."
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford will move to New York City to begin a stint teaching at Columbia's MFA writing program. Ford, a Mississippi native, currently teaches at the University of Mississippi. (Washington Post)
