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:
Publishers Weekly is launching a new website dedicated to self-publishing called BookLife, which will go live on May 29. (GalleyCat)
Meanwhile, self-published author Lorraine Devon Wilke argues against the complaint that self-publishing is ruining the publishing industry. (Huffington Post)
Plans to name a Lake Tahoe cove after Mark Twain have been scrapped amid opposition from the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California, who claim that Twain’s literature expressed racist views of Native Americans. (Los Angeles Times)
Actress and singer Jennifer Lopez has written a memoir, forthcoming in October from Penguin, about her 2012 world tour—a time when she “confronted her greatest challenges.” (CBS News)
This week marks the launch of Authors Alliance, a new organization created by academics in Berkeley, California, that provides support for authors. (Melville House)
Merriam-Webster has added one hundred and fifty new entries to its Collegiate Dictionary this year, including fracking, hashtag, selfie, and Yooper. (Time)
A new television biopic on the BBC covers Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’s final days in New York City. (Guardian)
British performance poet Kate Tempest released a genre-bending hip-hop album this week; the author will adapt the record—which is being called a "rap narrative"—into a novel, which will be published by Bloomsbury later this year. Picador will also publish Tempest's debut poetry collection this year. (Independent)
