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 Asian American Writers Workshop is organizing a writers boycott of the state of Arizona "until it revokes anti-immigration law SB 1070." So far more than one hundred prominent writers have signed the boycott letter, which is posted at Wordstrike.
Andrew Wylie told the Financial Times this week that his newly founded publishing company, Odyssey, will grow if an "accord" can't be reached with publishers regarding e-book rights. "It will not publish twenty books, it will publish two thousand and have outside investors and make itself available to other agents." (New York Observer)
The vast library belonging to the experimental novelist David Markson, who died in New York City in June, ended up in the used book collection at the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan. A London Review of Books blogger discovered some of the Markson books at the Strand and is now spearheading a campaign on Facebook to reunited the collection, some of which was sold "on outdoor carts for a dollar." (Los Angeles Times)
Bruce Butterfield, the former president of Simon & Schuster and current president of The Wittfield Group, has joined the board of directors of FastPencil, which provides self-publishing and book promotion services to authors.
A Moscow poet was convicted on Wednesday of turning a youth poetry commune "into an illegal militant group and abusing several of its members." (Moscow Times)
The author Anne Rice, who converted to Christianity twelve years ago and has published Christian-themed books in recent years, announced on Wednesday via her Facebook page that she has "quit being a Christian" because of the religion's attitude toward birth control, homosexuality, and science. (Guardian)
Starting in September, Barnes & Noble will begin an "aggressive promotion" of the Nook by building "thousand-square-foot boutiques" to showcase the device in all of its stores. (New York Times)
An online bookstore based in Minnesota will open its first bricks-and-mortar store in Zimmerman, Minnesota, this fall. (Star News)
A new poll of twenty-thousand consumers has revealed the intriguing statistic that "iPad owners are six times more likely to be ‘wealthy, well-educated, power-hungry, over-achieving, sophisticated, unkind and non-altruistic 30- to 50-year-olds’." (Mail)
What are the "fifteen biggest bestsellers ever after the Bible"? Huffington Post has the answers—in a slideshow, of course.
Try not to be completely mesmerized by Book Depository Live, which tracks the live purchase of books by Book Depository customers worldwide. (Guardian)
