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:
On Monday Steve Jobs claimed that sales of e-books for the iPad now accounted for 22 percent of all e-book sales. The New York Times and several other news outlets have now debunked the claim.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which already publishes five of the twenty writers, announced plans to publish a collection of the stories and novel excerpts that appear in the Summer Fiction: 20 Under 40 Issue of the New Yorker. (Publishers Weekly) The New Yorker ran an editors' note in the latest issue explaining how they selected the young scribes.
Former Czech president Vaclav Havel has been awarded the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize for works that "appeal to readers regardless of their origin, nationality, and culture." Havel has published dozens of plays, books and political essays since the 1960s. (Associated Press)
The new iPhone 4 will launch later this month with access to the iBookstore and a much improved reading experience, according to the Bookseller.
The president of Penguin Canada is stepping down to return to his native India to write and pursue other opportunities. (Star)
This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Lowell's poem "For the Union Dead," which the poet first performed at the Boston Arts Festival in front of four thousand listeners a half century ago. "The crowd responded with such enthusiasm he read it twice." As the Boston Globe reports, "it's a poem that still speaks to what makes Boston the city it is." Check it out here.
This week the mayor of Paris announced a new policy to encourage and protect bookstores, among other small businesses, in the city's 5th arrondissement. Yesterday the London Evening Standard called for the English capital to follow suit.
Celebrity memoir news: Actress Demi Moore signed a two million dollar deal with HarperCollins to publish a memoir in 2012 (Sydney Morning Herald); Ace Frehley, the former lead guitarist of rock band Kiss, will publish his "Kiss and tell" memoir with Gallery, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, in the summer of 2011. (Associated Press)
