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President Barack Obama last week created a new position to oversee arts and culture in the Office of Public Liasion and Intergovernmental Affairs. Kareem Dale, who was previously named special assistant to the president for disability policy, will hold the new position under senior advisor Valerie Jarrett.
Novelist Tom Perrotta visited the University of New Hampshire in Durham as part of its Writers Series on an early March afternoon that was sunny enough for New Englanders to shed their wool caps and warm enough for the giant sand-filled snow banks that lined the roads to recede ever so slightly.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant worth a little more than two hundred thousand dollars to the Poetry Collection at SUNY, Buffalo, that will allow the Libraries department to digitize and catalogue its audio collection.
PEN American Center, the central U.S. outpost for the international writers organization, will welcome a new president this spring and bid farewell this summer to its longtime executive director.
David Kipen, the literature director at the National Endowment for the Arts has challenged the residents of Kellys Island, Ohio—all 131 of them—to read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as part of the independent federal agency's Big Read program. If they do? He'll buy them pizza. If they don't? He'll eat a copy of the book.
The Center for Book Arts in New York City is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the Vandercook Proof printing press with a series of events and the publication of the limited edition Vandercook Book, a collaborative artist book featuring work created using the press.
Barnes & Noble last week announced that it had acquired New Jersey-based e-book retailer Fictionwise for $15.7 million. In a press release, the bookseller said it plans to integrate Fictionwise into a digital strategy that includes the launch of an e-bookstore later this year.
The thirteenth annual Small Press Month, a nationwide celebration of the contributions of independent book publishers, is underway. Cosponsored by the New York Center for Independent Publishing, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, and the Independent Book Publishers Association, the schedule of events includes readings, book launches, author appearances, and other events that shore up support for and promote unity among small presses.
The shrine and grave of Sufi poet Rahman Baba, located outside the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar, were bombed on Thursday, and according to local authorities, members of the Taliban are suspected of the attack.
The National Endowment for the Arts released a new study yesterday that shows the unemployment rate among the nation's working artists, including writers, hit 6 percent in the final quarter of 2008. The unemployment rate for writers and authors alone is slightly higher: 6.6 percent.
