Short Story Vending Machines, Writers Who Run, and More

by
Staff
11.12.15

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. 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.

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 over the past decade. (Guardian)

Barthes had killed the author 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 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, and how writers should acknowledge memory as subjective and draw their own lines in the sand. (Biographile)

What would an “experimental” bookstore for Millennials 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)