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:
A university bookstore in Seattle will publish "the best novel written by a Washington State author" participating in National Novel Writing Month. (Shelf Awareness)
PaidContent takes a close look at Amazon Publishing's numbers and says, "Amazon has been getting credit for things it hasn’t achieved yet."
Meanwhile, Princeton University Press will try its hand at Kindle Singles, launching five titles next week, all excerpts from existing books. (Los Angeles Times)
A poetry salon created by writer Alex Dimitrov called The Wilde Boys has hosted poets such as Frank Bidart, Mark Doty, Michael Cunningham, Marie Howe, and Eileen Myles. The invitation-only attendees are largely young and gay. The New York Times writes "Getting Mr. Dimitrov to extend an invitation to someone new took a personal introduction or well-worded note. Good looks didn’t hurt either."
Inspired by the release of Joan Didion's Blue Nights, Flavorwire lists its favorite memoirs of loss.
Elizabeth Bishop was notoriously economical about publishing her poetry, with only four thin books appearing in her lifetime. However, she was a prolific painter, and a collection of her visual art has been published. Curator William Benton lists some of his favorite Bishop paintings. (Guardian)
The Library of America's blog, Reader's Almanac, tells us that 2011 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of Ambrose Bierce's The Devil’s Dictionary, despite the fact that the book was also published five years earlier as The Cynic’s Word Book.
Salman Rushdie weighs in via Twitter on Kim Kardashian's wedding fiasco with a limerick. (New York Times)
