Sneak Peek at New PBS Philip Roth Documentary, Gatsby at Cannes, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
3.12.13

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:

The much-anticipated Baz Luhrmann adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby will open the Cannes Film Festival. (Daily Beast)

If you're curious to see the new documentary Philip Roth: Unmasked, which is showing at New York City's Film Forum March 13 to 19, and will air on PBS on Friday, March 29, film critic Richard Brody parses a clip and discusses Roth's work for the New Yorker.

Victoria Strauss reports that in response to criticism of the author contracts for its new genre e-book imprints, Random House announced new terms for Hydra, Alibi, Loveswept, and Flirt. (Writers Beware)

Publishers Weekly ran the numbers on Amazon's bestseller rankingsthe figures may surprise you.

With a day or two to recover from AWP 2013 in Boston, several veteran attendees have shared their experiences and insights, including Steve Almond in the New Republic; and authors Roxane Gay and Julianna Baggott on their respective blogs.

Michele Filgate details her relationship to physical books, and visits an art exhibition in New York City, Meriç Algün Ringborg’s The Library of Unborrowed Books, which makes use of titles from the Center for Fiction’s library that have never once been taken home. (Paris Review Daily)

Today is Jack Kerouac's birthday. His friend, author and critic Joyce Johnson remembered the author of On the Road in this essay for Smithsonian in 2007.

If you missed Friday's episode of public radio show Studio 360, it featured Ben Marcus's The Flame Alphabet.