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 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, now in its twenty-eighth year, honors "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." This year's grand-prize winner has been announced along with winners in several sub-categories. The winning sentence, to give you an idea, ends with "...Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."
According to the New York Times, "Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country."
The Independent reports on the rise of "Dalit lit," which it calls "a quiet cultural revolution sweeping India's literary establishment." According to Wikipedia, "Dalit is a self-designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as untouchable."
Amazon's Web site went down for a few hours yesterday, and though service has now been restored a few novelists saw their book publicity efforts derailed by the glitch. (GalleyCat)
A two-minute film dramatizing the "power of reading" won two awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Check out the video at Publishing Perspectives.
Meet Paolo Javier, the new poet laureate of Queens, New York. (New York Daily News)
Best-selling Oprah Book Club author Jacquelyn Mitchard told Aol News that she has been virtually wiped out by a $190 million Ponzi scheme.
Muse Books, an indie bookseller in Florida, will celebrate its thirtieth year in business tomorrow. "A community without a bookstore is like a community without a heart," the owner told the Daytona Beach News-Journal.
