Teddy Wayne Answers Jennifer Weiner, Francis Ford Coppola Adapts Kerouac, and More

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:

NPR radio show Studio 360 reports ghostwriters authored the majority of current bestselling nonfiction books.

Today, Apple launched iBooks Author, a free app that will enable authors to create and publish e-books. (GalleyCat)

In answer to novelist Jennifer Weiner's accusation of gender bias in New York Times book reviews, 2011 Whiting Writers' Award-winning author Teddy Wayne offers another point of view. Wayne claims "male authors are somewhat like male porn stars: getting work, but outearned and outnumbered by their female counterparts." (Salon)

Bestselling author Ann Patchett reportedly wowed the audience yesterday at the ABA's Seventh Annual Winter Institute in New Orleans, delivering a speech concerning her path from writer to independent bookstore owner, and receiving a standing ovation. (Shelf Awareness)

The Millions reports a film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road will likely be released in France this March, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, directed by Walter Salles, and starring Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi, and Viggo Mortensen.

Essayist Algis Valiunas writes of the tortured lives of three early modern poets: Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire, as well as Baudelaire's "imagined hero," Edgar Allan Poe. (First Things)

Speaking of Edgar Allan Poe, today is his birthday, and for the third straight year the Poe Toaster failed to appear. For decades, to mark the great author's birth, a mysterious stranger left three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Poe's graveside in Baltimore, Maryland. (ABC News)

Novelist Jessica Francis Kane discusses the particularities of writing with small children at home, and questions she often fielded on book tour: "I was asked at almost every reading how becoming a mother had changed my writing. The question came most often from older women who, I recognize, probably didn’t receive the emotional support needed to raise a family and keep writing…I started wondering if fathers on book tour are asked this question." (Beyond the Margins)