Sylvia Plath in New York, Halloween Short Stories, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
10.31.13

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:

Starting tomorrow, Amazon will collect sales tax in Massachusetts and Connecticut. (Shelf Awareness)

Meanwhile, Amazon’s film and television division Amazon Studios will create a two-hour pilot for a series based on bestseller Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books. Eric Overmyer, veteran writer and producer of dramas such as Law & Order, The Wire, and Treme, will assist Connelly with the project. (GalleyCat)

USA Today reveals what can be gleaned from two decades of its bestsellers lists. Good news for fiction which, according to its data, has remained at it highest point as a percentage of bestseller sales since 2009.

Billy Collins recently spoke with PBS about his new book, Aimless Love. Collins told Jeffrey Brown, “The really authentic thing about humor is that anyone can pretend to be serious.”

Roxane Gay looks at Elizabeth Winder’s Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953, and considers the much-studied life of the young poet. (Aesthete)

And Cara Cannella cracks open the recently published The Most of Nora Ephron—a six hundred-page anthology of the late Ephron’s writing. (Biographile)

Today is the birthday of John Keats. Born in London on this day in 1795. (Los Angeles Times)

And for Halloween, Salon gathered short and scary stories from twelve authors, including Shani Boianjiu and Mat Johnson.