Remembering Novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Cabinet Magazine on Trial, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
4.4.13

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:

Amazon is testing a book cover generator intended for self-published Kindle e-books. (Digital Reader)

The University of Nebraska Press has purchased Potomac Books for $1.2 million. Potomac Books was founded in 1983, specializing in military history. (Shelf Awareness)

Thessaly La Force remembers prize-winning author Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who died yesterday at her home in New York City, at age eighty-five. Beginning her career as a novelist, she helped Merchant Ivory Productions create twenty-two films, winning an Academy Award for her screen adaptation of E.  M. Forster’s A Room with a View. (Paris Review Daily)

Meanwhile, to celebrate Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's life and work, the New Yorker has made six stories Jhabvala published in the magazine freely available, including her first, “The Interview,” appearing in 1957.

Author Aryn Kyle reveals how she spent the $500,000 advance from her bestselling first novel The Gods of Animals—for love. (More)

Architectural Digest takes a behind-the-scenes tour of the sets designed for Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which were created by Luhrmann's wife, designer Catherine Martin.

People magazine is sponsoring a live video chat with Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini on April 11.

Sasha Frere-Jones reports on the mock trial of thirteen-year-old Cabinet magazine, where writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus “accused the journal of a variety of sins rooted in triviality.” (Bookforum)