Worst Publisher in History, Death of the Partisan Review, 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:

GalleyCat reports publishing-related Kickstarter projects raised over fifteen million dollars in 2012 [2], but with a 30 percent success rate.

On the Best American Poetry blog, Don Share recalls his time working at the venerable Partisan Review [3], which was in operation from 1934 to 2003.

"Curll was rumored (by Henry Fielding among others) to keep a team of hacks confined to a garret, where they churned out a high volume of disreputable and highly disposable texts, like an 18th-century outpost of the Gawker Media empire [4]." Laura Miller reveals the worst publisher in history. (Salon)

A musical parody of erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey [5] is coming to the New York City stage. (Entertainment Weekly)

Meanwhile, Doubleday is releasing the E. L. James trilogy in hardcover [6] on January 29. (GalleyCat)

Dan Chiasson looks at the poetry of David Ferry [7], who recently won the National Book Award at age eighty-eight. (New Yorker)

The Huffington Post offers advice on composing a succinct agent query letter [8].

Sterling Lord, the agent [9] who introduced Jack Kerouac to the reading public, has written a memoir entitled Lord of Publishing. (Vanity Fair)