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:
New research led by Martin Lotze, a neuroscientist at the University of Greifswald in Germany, suggests that skilled creative writers use parts of the brain in a similar way to accomplished musicians and professional athletes. (New York Times)
Writer’s Digest and its parent company, F+W Media, has ended its partnership with self-publishing platform Author Solutions. Abbott Press, the self-publishing imprint previously cosponsored by both companies, will remain an imprint of Author Solutions. (Let’s Get Visible)
Industry statistics program BookStats, formed three years ago through an agreement between the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), will not be renewed for a fifth year. (Publishers Weekly)
Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, has named poet A. Van Jordan as the school’s first Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor. Jordan has been awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Whiting Writers Award, and a Pushcart Prize for his work.
Following the controversy surrounding the recently scrapped renovation plans for the New York Public Library’s main branch, library president Anthony Marx reportedly considers restructuring the library’s board of directors—possibly to include librarians—to be “absolutely fair game.” (Melville House)
Random House Australia is including a sheet of stickers designed by five Japanese artists with each first edition of Haruki Murakami’s new novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, scheduled for release August 12. (GalleyCat)
After nine-year-old Spencer Collins of Leawood, Kansas, was forced by the city’s government last week to remove a Little Free Library he and his father had installed in their front yard, Christian book publisher Concordia sent the family a package of fourteen books in an effort to help resurrect the library. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
