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:
According to the Guardian, a group of Australian women writers is working to set up an equivalent to the Orange Prize in their country, in order to battle the "systemic exclusion of women writers over several decades" from Australia's major literary prizes.
In a synergy of megacompanies, Walmart will soon sell Amazon's Kindle in over three thousand stores. (eBookNewser)
The American Booksellers Assocation has elected a new president for a two-year term: Becky Anderson, co-owner of Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville, Illinois. Steve Bercu, co-owner of BookPeople in Austin, was elected vice president.
A British publisher is applying for a Guinness World Record after releasing a book on the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, written by Diana biographer Andrew Morton, a mere seventy-two hours after the royal nuptials took place. (Guardian)
A team of scholars has spent the last thirty years attempting to track down and edit all fifteen thousand letters written by Charles Darwin, and thanks to a new chunk of grant money totaling $8.2 million, the entire collection will be published by 2022, according to the New York Times.
Mulholland Books is publishing an e-book collection of short stories based on "characters and cases from L. A. Noire," a forthcoming video game from Rockstar Games.
The French parliament voted unanimously yesterday to set fixed prices for e-books. (San Francisco Chronicle)
Has a podiatrist's rotating Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign in Los Angeles succeeded Gatsby's green light as a symbol of unattainable dreams? Salon's Laura Miller takes a look at an icon that appears in novels from both Jonathan Lethem and David Foster Wallace.