Lauren Grodstein on Amazon User Reviews, Maurice Sendak’s Last Book, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
3.13.13

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:

With the owners of Porter Square Books approaching retirement, they've decided to sell the Boston bookstore. (Boston Globe)

Avi Steinberg examines the late Maurice Sendak’s last title, My Brother’s Book. (New Yorker)

Volume One Brooklyn views the exhibit Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, which is on display for the first time outside of Paris, loaned to New York City's Morgan Library by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Author Lara Santoro, discussing gender disparity in literary fiction, writes, "Bad men get to be king. Bad women get to swallow poison and die." (Huffington Post)

On her Tumblr, A Friend of the Family author Lauren Grodstein reveals what she's learned from an onslaught of Amazon user reviews, "I’ve stopped caring so much what other people think."

Lisa Russ Spaar looks at the sophomore efforts of poets Charles Wright and Mary Szybist. Wright's second collection Hard Freight was published in 1973, and Szybist's Incarnadine appeared last month. (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Warner Brothers has purchased screen rights to Julie Kibler's book, Calling Me Home, published in February by St. Martin's Press. (Hollywood Reporter)

In other Hollywood news, Jump Street Films optioned Peter Cameron's novel Andorra, which Farrar, Straus and Giroux first published in 1997, and was reprinted in 2009 by Picador. (Dark Horizons)