Nouns Becoming Verbs, Canada's Key Porter Books Goes Under, and More

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:

Someone going by the name "Anonymous" wrote a novel about Obama's presidency slated for release from Simon & Schuster on January 25, according to the Daily Beast, which is also trying to figure out the author's identity.

As Borders flirts with bankruptcy, Barnes & Noble is reporting its best holiday sales season since 1997, helped by a boost from the Nook Color. (New York Times)

Key Porter Books, a publisher that releases approximately one hundred Canadian nonfiction titles each year, has gone out of business. "It's a huge blow," said one author, Mark Bourrie, who had a book slated for release from the press on January 25 that is now on hold. "I don't see anyone filling that gap. To have such a big house go down is really bad." (Star)

A plagiarism case against Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling has been dismissed by a U.S. judge. (Guardian)

Whatever happened to that most intimate of epistolary salutations, "Dear"? (Wall Street Journal)

News of a revised edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn continues to stir up strong opinions throughout the literary world. Here are two more takes from the New York Times and the Guardian.

Have you friended anyone lately? Or Googled? Or parented? As the Economist points out, no trend in the English language "has been more obtrusive in recent years than the changing of nouns into verbs." 

The London Tube system is celebrating twenty-five years of Poems on the Underground with a new set of verse, including selections from two authors who appeared on the very first batch of Underground poems in 1986: Seamus Heaney and Grace Nichols. (Londonist)