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:
The tenth annual installment of Litquake, the largest independent literary festival on the West Coast, gets underway in San Francisco tomorrow with nine days of readings, author panels, workshops, pub crawls, and other events (San Francisco Chronicle).
English PEN, the founding division of the international literary and human rights organization, is warning that expensive legal claims are exerting a chilling effect on nonfiction publishing in Britain (Bookseller).
U.S. District Court judge Denny Chin has given Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers until November 9 to revise the Google Book Search settlement (Publishers Weekly). Meanwhile, a few blocks from the courthouse, New York Law School is hosting the D is for Digitize conference, where academics and industry professionals will discuss the legal, literary, and cultural implications of the controversial book-scanning arrangement.
Choreographer Winifred Haun says the John Steinbeck classic East of Eden was the inspiration behind her new ballet Promises, which premieres this weekend at the Ruth Page Theater in Chicago (Flavorwire).
After yesterday’s announcement from Amazon, the Kindle is now available in Aruba, Liechtenstein, Tanzania, and 166 other countries and territories. So why not Canada? (Wall Street Journal)
One hundred and sixty years late, Edgar Allan Poe will be the subject of not one, but two funeral services this Sunday at Baltimore’s Westminster Hall. Actor John Astin (a.k.a. Gomez from The Addams Family) will emcee (Associated Press).
The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is closing five branches, reducing service hours, raising fees, and laying off thirty staff members to cope with budget shortfalls and what it calls “chronic underfunding” by the city and state (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
Adapt or perish? U.K. culture minister Margaret Hodge has suggested that libraries should borrow a page from Amazon—offering home delivery service and selling books as well as lending them (Bookseller).
