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:
Vending machines in the city of Grenoble, France, will soon dispense literary snacks for the commuting consumer—that is, the machines will be stocked with short stories [2]. French publisher Short Édition has made six hundred short stories from its library available for purchase through the vending machines, which will offer customers hungry for a bite of literature the option of one, two, or five minute reads. (Independent)
“Freedom, consciousness, and wildness: Running offers writers escape with purpose.” At the Atlantic, author Nick Ripatrazone examines the connections between writing and running. [3]
Be sure to hold on to those first editions of The Great Gatsby and Ulysses. A new rare book price index reveals how values of first edition twentieth-century popular novels have more than doubled [4] over the past decade. (Guardian)
“Barthes had killed the author [5] so that ideas could run free, but then remembered there are some ideas that can only fully live in a body, a self, an author.” A writer revisits the seminal essays of French cultural critic Roland Barthes, on what would be his one-hundredth birthday. (Telegraph)
Barnes & Noble has expanded its Nook Audiobooks offerings [6] with the launch of a new audiobook app and website, NookAudiobooks.com, which includes more than sixty thousand titles. (Shelf Awareness)
Dinah Lenney, editor of the recent collection of craft essays, Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction, discusses the risky role of truth in memoir writing [7], and how writers should acknowledge memory as subjective and draw their own lines in the sand. (Biographile)
What would an “experimental” bookstore for Millennials [8] look like? Two tech entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom are opening a brick-and-mortar bookstore in London that, aside from stocking between five- and six-thousand titles, will feature apparent Millennial bait: free drinks and a DJ booth. (Melville House)