Wallace Stevens’s Home for Sale, Shelf Awareness Turns Nine, and More

by
Staff
6.30.14

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:

The Hartford, Connecticut, home of poet Wallace Stevens, who died in 1955, has been listed for sale by its current owners with an asking price of $489,900. (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) 

The owners of New York City–based Book Culture have responded to allegations that five workers were fired for their pro-union views (Gothamist). Chris Doeblin and Annie Hedrick explained in a post on the bookstore’s blog that a new union for employees would be recognized and that the five members of staff who were let go were supervisors who were not willing to continue working with the unionized work force. 

Shelf Awareness, the publisher of two e-newsletters on books and bookselling, celebrates its ninth anniversary today.

A recent study by the Center for Reading Research has shown that men are more likely to understand a number of words associated with cars, weapons, and technology unknown to women, while women are more likely to recognize words related to types of material, flowers, and domestic activities. (Melville House)

Authors Rabih Alameddine, Teju Cole, Aleksandar Hemon, and Ricardo Rowan Phillips are among the many writers caught up in the drama of the World Cup, making their allegiances, joys, and disappointments known through news outlets such as the New Republic and on Twitter. (Los Angeles Times)

The Airship lists ten authors, including Samuel Beckett, Jack Kerouac, and Yann Martel, who have written and published in a second language.

A drinking song written in 1951 by Dylan Thomas and featuring Henneky’s Long Bar, a pub in London, will be published for the first time in the autobiography of Fred Jarvis, the former general secretary of Britain’s National Union of Teachers. (Guardian)