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:
Who says there’s no money in poetry? The Haiku Guys charge up to $250 per hour to write poems during special events. (Fast Company)
Audible, the world’s largest audiobook producer and seller, has enlisted well-known authors such as Philip Pullman to write original stories meant solely for audio recordings. “Long before writing, people were telling each other stories and the audiobook goes all the way back to that tradition,” said Pullman. (NPR)
“Although she has been occasionally mischaracterized as a confessional poet, she is not confessing; she has created a cast of characters that represent things she might confess.” At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Lynn Melnick discusses poet Diane Wakoski’s belief in “personal mythology,” her newest poetry collection Bay of Angels, and her influence on—and resistance to—different poetic schools of thought.
Bestselling Italian author Umberto Eco’s new novel is set for a U.S. release this fall. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish Eco’s Numero Zero, which is already a bestseller in Italy, on November 3. The eighty-three-year-old writer is best known for his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose. (New York Times)
In Boston, the Writers’ Room has provided exclusive rentable workspaces for writers for nearly thirty years. (Boston Globe)
Early results from a survey of traditionally published authors in the United Kingdom show a majority of authors polled are “more committed to their agent than to their publisher.” (Bookseller)
China will be the guest of honor at BookExpo America’s (BEA) 2015 Global Market Forum, and will send five hundred Chinese authors and publishing professionals to attend the New York City convention in May. BEA’s show director says this is the “most significant foreign delegation that we have ever hosted at America’s largest publishing convention.” (Publishers Weekly)
Not safe for work…or libraries. A young woman in Ontario was recently arrested for recording fifty sex tapes in two branches of the public library. The arrest follows a similar case in Oregon earlier this year. “Don’t do it,” wrote Library Journal’s public indecency correspondent Annoyed Librarian to those who may be tempted to follow suit. “It won’t turn out well.” (Los Angeles Times)
