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:
In the wake of plagiarism accusations, St. Martin’s Press released a statement yesterday saying it had compared its 2011 release, Lenore Hart’s The Raven’s Bride to Cothburn O’Neal’s 1956 book The Very Young Mrs. Poe and "found any similarities limited to the inevitable overlap of two novels covering the same subject: Virginia Clemm, who married Poe when she was thirteen years old." (Washington Post)
Amazon recently announced that it “will pay customers five dollars to go into a local store, scan an item, walk out, and buy the same item on Amazon.” The Rumpus has some choice words for the online giant.
Laura Miller at Salon lists the top five works of fiction for 2011, including Mat Johnson's Pym and State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, and for the first time includes a list of honorable mentions.
On author Ron Slate's website, On the Seawall, twenty poets list their favorite new and recent titles.
Novelist David Bowman details the habit many authors have of rereading their favorite authors. Novelist Siddhartha Deb rereads Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Stephen King returns to Robert Penn Warren, and each morning Sherman Alexie reaches for the work of Emily Dickinson. (New York Times)
In an essay for The Nervous Breakdown novelist Sean Beaudoin lists ways to not get published.
Mark Vonnegut—the late Kurt Vonnegut’s son—has written a letter disputing the recent biography of his father, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles Shields. (GalleyCat)
A new trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has been released. (The Playlist)
