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:
Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." The announcement was immediately met with a rebuke by the Chinese government, which said in a statement that "Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law," and that awarding him the prize ran "completely counter to the principle of the prize and is also a blasphemy to the peace prize." (Telegraph) Liu, who is currently serving an eleven-year prison sentence for "inciting subversion of state power" through his writing and activism, was nominated for the prize by PEN President Kwame Anthony Appiah in January of this year. (Press Release)
Nobel Prize for Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa is perhaps the first laureate to have punched another Nobel laureate in the face. The incident happened at a movie premier in Mexico City in 1976, when Vargas Llosa greeted not-yet-laureate Gabriel García Márquez "with a right hook that knocked the Colombian author in what became a scandal in Latin American literary circles." (Wall Street Journal) Notably, Vargas Llosa was also the International President of PEN for three years in the 1970s. The announcement of his award has been called the "News of the Year" in his home country of Peru. (Global Voices)
Starting on Sunday, Staples stores will sell Amazon's Kindle. (CNET)
Counterpoint Press will close its New York City office at the end of October. (Publishers Weekly)
One British betting agency has suspended wagers on the Booker prize after Tom McCarthy's novel C inexplicably saw a massive flurry of bets fall in its favor. (Guardian)
According to a recent survey, Stephen King is America's favorite author. (Harris Interactive)
The twenty-seventh annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering will take place in Elko, Nevada, this coming January and, "as part of its ongoing effort to build understanding among herding cultures worldwide, the Gathering will welcome horsemen, musicians and craftsmen from the Hungarian puszta, the largest contiguous grasslands in Europe, home to the legendary Hungarian horsemen, csikos, who have tended and defended their herds of grey longhorn Hungarian cattle since the Magyars first crossed into the area from the Carpathians a thousand years ago." (PR Newswire)
