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:
Appearing on The View, a daytime talk show, one guest claimed to have never heard of the best-selling erotica novel, 50 Shades of Grey—president Barack Obama. (GalleyCat)
In light of 2012 marking the two hundredth anniversary of the births of Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, and Edward Lear, the Guardian examines the literary afterlife.
The New Yorker debates the many English translations of the first sentence of Albert Camus’s The Stranger.
The writer Studs Terkel would have turned one hundred yesterday, and the city of Chicago is celebrating the occasion. (Huffington Post)
To mark the sixtieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Japan, the Rawalpindi Arts Council in Islamabad held a recital of haiku poetry. (Pakistan Observer)
The New Yorker considers Get Your War On author David Rees’s new book, How to Sharpen Pencils, and his business of artisanal pencil sharpening: "Clients send him fifteen dollars and a blunt pencil, which he then sharpens by hand before sending it back to them complete with bagged shavings and a signed certificate of sharpening."
If you're near New York City, Lit Crawl Brooklyn 2012 is this weekend, featuring numerous events, including a PEN reading at BookCourt bookstore with Catherine Barnett, Monica Ferrell, and Cathy Park Hong.
