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:
Although lagging a bit behind the American market, Western Europe is now experiencing a massive shift toward e-books. (paidContent)
Len Vlahos, chief operating officer of the American Booksellers Association, is departing the ABA for the position of executive director of the Book Industry Study Group. (Shelf Awareness)
The Victorianator, a new iPhone app—said to be "like a cross between a poetry reading and Wii Sports"—was created by a team of poets, designers, and computer scientists for LudicVoice, a company helmed by Jason Camlot, a Victorian literature professor. (New Yorker)
If you have a blast spinning the Victorianator "down the ringing grooves of change," check out Galleycat's roundup of twenty free book apps.
You may recall that in the first season of Mad Men, the young account executive Ken Cosgrove landed a story in the Atlantic. This made Paul Kinsey livid, reminding the Sterling Cooper copywriter that his career in fiction had fizzled out. It turns out there is a long history of ad men transitioning into the literary field, and the Awl provides a list of six author's who, before they published books, wrote copy for laundry detergent.
A roofer and poet, William Letford has made a splash at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and the Guardian has a recording of a portion of his performance.
Word & Film offers a list of the best literary shows on television, as well as those in development, including Hobgoblin, a new series for HBO created by novelists Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.
In other book-to-film news, Vulture reports that the movie Rosaline, starring Keira Knightley and based on the unreleased first novel When You Were Mine by Rebecca Serle—who graduated from the New School's MFA program in 2009—may actually be in theaters before the novel hits the shelves of your local bookstore. (New York)
The new Concise Oxford English Dictionary has been released, and "sexting" is a noun. (Wired)
