Saving Venice's Bookshops, Ben Dolnick's Writing Tricks, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
4.18.13

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:

Los Angeles poet laureate Eloise Klein Healy is recovering from a medical issue and has canceled all upcoming events. (GalleyCat)

There's a free app to help navigate the massive Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend on the campus of USC.

Authors in Venice, Italy, have mobilized to save the city's bookshops. (Bookseller)

Novelist Ben Dolnick reveals the writing tricks he's used and ones he's discarded: “I’ve sold all but one of my microphones, put away my mini-notebooks, stopped scouring the Internet for scraps of wisdom.” (New York Times)

Emily O’Neill tallies the cost of this year's submission fees, contests, and writing workshops. (Billfold)

Faber announced its new immersive e-book of The Thirty-Nine Steps breaks new ground in the medium. The famous thriller by Scottish novelist John Buchan was first published as a serial in 1915. (Guardian)

For her premiere craft blog post, Graywolf Press publisher Fiona McCrae discusses first pages: “Bad opening pages are all alike…too many adjectives, clunky sentences, and clichés combine to create insurmountable dullness.”

The Financial Times looks at Saul Bellow’s Heart: A Son’s Memoir by Greg Bellow, out next week from Bloomsbury.