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:
An independent report on the public library’s role in England has warned that libraries need to become more like coffee shops—and be sure to offer free WiFi—in order to survive. (Guardian)
Rare and used bookseller AbeBooks.com has listed its fifty most expensive book sales of the year. A first edition of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, for example, sold for eighteen thousand dollars.
In more book-bidding news, you can now purchase a book previously owned by a celebrity for a good cause. ReadByFamous.com sells books pre-owned by famous actors, artists, athletes, and more, and proceeds of the sales go towards literacy-focused nonprofit organizations. (New York Daily News)
Emily St. John Mandel, whose novel Station Eleven was a finalist for the National Book Award, discusses a literary passage that has influenced her writing of “complex, flawed characters” for the Atlantic’s “By Heart” series.
Beyond the Bechdel Test: Kelly Jensen suggests that the Bechdel Test, in which a work of fiction “passes” if it features at least two women talking to each other about “something other than men,” may still be too limiting in discussing issues of how women are portrayed in fiction. (BookRiot)
A new anthology featuring selections of David Foster Wallace’s fiction, teaching syllabi, and e-mail correspondence offers a sense of the late writer’s virtuosity, “whether as a fantasist, a maximalist, an ethicist…a tourist…or culture critic.” Read Janet Maslin’s review of The David Foster Wallace Reader at the New York Times.
“Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim’s logo.” On this day in 1988, poet, essayist, and Nobel Prize–winner Joseph Brodsky gave a gripping commencement speech at the University of Michigan. (BrainPickings)
Create a new holiday tradition: Instead of sending out your normal holiday cards, why not send small-press literary chapbooks to your loved ones instead? (Bustle.com)
