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 NEA announced today that seventy-five nonprofit organizations will receive grants totalling one million dollars to host local Big Read projects, which bring "communities together to read, discuss, and celebrate one of thirty-one selections from United States and world literature." Check out the full list of recipients here.
Lisa Rundle, the Penguin Canada employee whose sexual harassment claim against the company's former president was settled out of court this week, has been rehired by the publisher and will resume her former position "in a few weeks' time." (Star)
According to his publishing company, James Patterson has become the first author (or rather, team of authors) to sell over one million e-books. (Associated Press)
The Harry Ransom Center has acquired the papers of National Book Award winner Denis Johnson.
Did Emily Dickinson have epilepsy? (WBUR)
Oxford University has opened Project Woruldhord, in which "members of the public, of academia, of special interest groups are asked to submit via an online Web site any images, documents, audio, video they have of material they would be happy to share with
the rest of the world to further the study of Old English and the Anglo-Saxons." (Guardian)
With the help of the Onion and a local bookseller, a former improv performer in Minnesota "redefines the modern day book club" every month with Books and Bars, which blends "improvisational comedy, literary analysis, and alcohol." (Minnesota Daily)
A family of musicians recently featured in an HBO special made an album of Edna St. Vincent Millay sonnets set to music and will perform the songs this Saturday at the Monterey Meeting House in Massachusetts. (Berkshire Eagle)
A Toronto poet spends her days asking strangers on the street to read poems while she records them on video. The results may surprise you: "About 95 percent of the people she approaches agree to read." (National Post)
