City Lights Wins Bookseller of the Year, Authorship of Shakespeare's Work Questioned Again, and More

by Staff
3.15.10

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 legendary City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, founded in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, has been chosen as Publishers Weekly's Bookseller of the Year for 2010.

As authorship of Shakespeare's work is challenged yet again, the Guardian "asked some of today's finest Shakespearean actors and directors their thoughts on the authorship question."

The New Republic discovers what literature may be able to tell us about the recent tragedies in Haiti and Chile.

Norman Mailer's son published a book about New Orleans with Smashwords, a free online publisher and distributor.

John Grisham's first novel is set for a stage adaptation. (USA Today)

Bad publicity is still good publicity, as the anonymous authors of a French anti-capitalism manifesto discovered when their book rose to number fifty-four on Amazon's best-seller list after Glenn Beck called it "the most evil book I've read in a long, long time." (New York Times)

The Star argues that Canada's reluctance to allow Amazon to set up operations in the country has more to do with competition than with culture.

The Los Angeles Times is blogging about publishing and the future of the digital marketplace from the South by Southwest Interactive Festival this week.

The Guardian takes a look at why the poetry of William Butler Yeats has inspired so many pop songs.