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 flight attendant who volunteered at Ground Zero collected a poem written shortly after 9/11 by an Ohio sixth grader. She donated the poem along with thousands of other cards and letters to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which will open this Sunday. The student, Aaron Walsh, now a senior in college, and the volunteer, Tanya Hoggard, met recently to discuss their shared history. (Cincinnati via Poets.org)
A new study, sponsored by the State University of New York at Buffalo and published in the journal Psychological Science, suggests the reading of fiction increases feelings of empathy and belonging. (Guardian)
Amazon has announced a new feature for the Kindle called @Author, which allows readers to highlight an e-book passage and ask the author relevant questions about it. Writers such as Susan Orlean, Brad Meltzer, and Timothy Ferriss have signed up to participate in the service, which is now operating in a limited beta version. (New Yorker)
Chad Harbach, cofounder of n+1, publishes his first novel, The Art of Fielding, today. It's reviewed in this week's New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Slate, and blurbed by heavy hitters such as Jonathan Franzen, Jay McInerney, and John Irving. The October issue of Vanity Fair published an article by fellow n+1 cofounder Keith Gessen that details Harbach's path from workshop to $665,000 book deal, and yesterday Vanity Fair announced it will publish an expanded version of the article as an $1.99 e-book, How a Book Is Born: The Making of The Art of Fielding. (GalleyCat)
The citizens of Los Angeles may travel to the Getty Museum this Saturday to witness goth rockstar Marilyn Manson read the poems of William Blake, along with six poets reading original work inspired by the Getty's exhibit Luminous Paper: British Watercolors and Drawings. (Los Angeles Times)
The bankrupt Borders company has asked to provide $125,000 severance payments to its top fourteen executives. (Ann Arbor)
Nabokov expert Brian Boyd contends that the author of Lolita and Pale Fire anticipated contemporary psychology. (American Scholar)
Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann began filming a new 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby this week in Australia. (Collider)
