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:
A year ago Derek Walcott pulled out of the running for the Oxford professor of poetry post amid controversy. Now, "the only woman standing in this year's contest, poet Paula Claire, has withdrawn in protest over what she is describing as 'serious flaws' in the election
process that she believes have pushed best-known candidate Geoffrey Hill ahead of all other contenders." (Guardian)
Israeli author David Grossman has been awarded "one of Europe's most prestigious prizes," the German Book Trade Peace Prize, "for his efforts at Israeli and Palestinian reconciliation." (Sify)
According to Robert Hass in the Believer, "Chinese poetry has come alive again."
President Barack Obama will write the foreword for Nelson Mandela's private diaries, which are due to be published in October. (Guardian)
Tomorrow a new British radio play will bring to life an "unhappy" episode from the teenage years of the poet Philip Larkin. (Telegraph)
Politics and Prose, Washington D.C.'s most prominent indie bookstore, is up for sale after its seventy-four-year-old owners became "simply too tired" to continue steering the bookstore "through the uncertainty of an industry threatened by e-books." (Washington Post)
Wired asks: "Could a fifty-dollar 'paperback' Kindle beat the iPad?"
The Bathroom Readers' Institute has declared June National Bathroom Reading Month. (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
