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:
On June 7, the New Yorker will publish a list of "twenty individuals under the age of forty whom they believe to be the most talented and important American writers of their generation." The last (and only) time the magazine published such a list was in 1999, and it included Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz, Jeffrey Eugenides, and David Foster Wallace. The New York Observer ponders what role making the list plays in the careers of those writers.
The home in Brooklyn, New York, where Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's is on sale for eighteen million dollars. As George Plimpton told it, Capote rented two basement rooms in the house but took friends on tours of all twenty-eight rooms, claiming he owned, restored, and decorated them all. (Guardian)
The PEN American Center has announced the inaugural PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing to honor a nonfiction book about sports. The award is open to all such books published in 2009, and the winner will be awarded five thousand dollars at a ceremony in New York City in October.
Quirk Books, a Philadelphia-based indie press, is moving its distribution from Chronicle Books to Random House. (Publishers Weekly)
Sarah Palin has a new book coming out this fall about American values. (Telegraph)
The Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog will no longer be a blog, and the Los Angeles Times' Jacket Copy was perturbed enough by the news to pen a poem urging the organization to "rage, rage against the dying of the blog."
In February, the New York Times reported on the travails of blind poet Tato Laviera, who had suddenly found himself homeless in New York City after some economic and health troubles. Thanks to help from various politicians and activists, Laviera now has "a bright studio in East Harlem" to call home.
In preparation for next month's World Cup (the U.S. national team meets on Monday for training camp in Princeton, New Jersey, in case you were wondering), the New York Times has gathered the year's best books about soccer.
