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:
After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's three years ago, British author Terry Pratchett is now considering assisted suicide. (Guardian)
Salman Rushdie reveals that his Showtime series will be a sort of "paranoid science fiction." (New York Magazine)
New online book forum Canadian Bookshelf unites readers of literature from the north, with interviews, interactive reading lists, events listings, and other features designed to "make it easier for readers of all kinds to discover Canadian books." (San Francisco Chronicle)
A Pennsylvania community encourages literary exchange with a public leave-a-poem, take-a-poem mailbox known as the "poetry tree." (York Daily Record)
The market is saturated with nonfiction on the wars Iraq and Afghanistan, but where's the great contemporary war novel? (Atlantic)
Meanwhile, there's no shortage of novels covering the Great Recession. (Flavorwire)
Facebook's most adverse effect on writing may have nothing to do with grammar or style, but perpetuation of "the teenage fantasy that writers write only to themselves and to those who are just like them." (Inside Higher Ed)
Many writers have used pen names to develop rangy careers, but pseudonyms may have outlived their usefulness in the digital age. (Salon)
