Top Nonfiction Books This Year, Ask Zadie Smith, 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:

Amazon launched Kindle Singles in Germany. (Shelf Awareness)

Elon Green recounts a historic shakeup at the New Yorker in the 1980s, and the famous letter of opposition to its newly appointed editor signed by Janet Malcolm, J. D. Salinger, Calvin Trillin, and many others. (Awl)

Jason Diamond lists this year’s ten best books of nonfiction, including Rosie Schaap’s Drinking With Men, and Scott McClanahan’s Crapalachia. (Flavorwire)

Meanwhile, the Toast offers the ten writers you’ll most resent in 2013.

The NY Book Editors blog created a map to find your way around writer’s block.

Brain Pickings showcases a recording of actor James Earl Jones reading Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

Joel Lovell looks at the life and work of the late David Rakoff, and the making of his last book, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, which will be published this month. (New York Times)

Chloe Schama says the trailer for the Shane Salerno Salinger documentary is “phony and ridiculous.” (New Republic)

Novelist Zadie Smith answered questions from fans this morning on Twitter.