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:
Sir Salman Rushdie has signed a multimillion dollar deal with Random House to publish a memoir chronicling "his outsider's experience at British public school and Cambridge; his
evolution as a writer; his relationships as a husband and a father; and his years in hiding following the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini." (Independent)
Thanks to the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google, the Dead Sea Scrolls will soon be available online for free. (CBC News)
Amazon will underwrite the next Best Translated Book Awards, which previously had no cash prize, with funding that will see five thousand dollars go to both authors and translators of the winning titles. (Publishers Weekly)
According to the Bookseller, Amazon's territory controls on the Kindle are virtually "non-existent," meaning that with very little effort a person in the U.K. can buy an e-book from its U.S. publisher rather than the one that holds the title's rights in Britain.
The Arts Council England cut nearly 30 percent of its budget on Wednesday, a move that may have dire consequences for the fifty-nine independent publishers and literature organizations funded by the council. (Guardian)
In the Village Voice's Best Of NYC 2010 Awards issue that hit newsstands this week, the nation's largest alternative weekly declared Téa Obreht—who at twenty-five years old was the youngest writer to make the New Yorker's recent 20 under 40 list—the Best New York Writer Young Enough to Make You Slit Your Wrists.
Is travel writing dead? (Foreign Policy)
Pilot has a new Web program that turns your handwriting into a font.
