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 New Yorker has announced it will allow free access for three months to its entire archive of articles published since 2007 beginning July 21. During the period of unrestricted access, the magazine will collect data to determine a more efficient means of establishing a paywall for online subscribers. (New York Times)
Online writing community Wattpad has purchased the Red Room, a rival company originally described as the "Facebook for authors.” The newly acquired site went offline earlier this week. (Publishers Weekly)
Jurors in a defamation lawsuit brought by former Minnesota Governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura against Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL and author of the memoir American Sniper, were presented recently with a video deposition of the defendant, who was killed last year at a Texas gun range. Kyle alleged in his memoir that Ventura criticized the SEALs and the war in Iraq, which resulted in a bar brawl. (Washington Post)
Police in Minneapolis are offering a reward of up to five thousand dollars for tips leading to the arrest of an arsonist who torched a Little Free Library, a small lending box of books stationed in front of a residence on the city’s south side. (Star Tribune)
After a successful launch this past May, Penguin Random House has announced it will donate fifteen thousand dollars to help sponsor next spring’s California Bookstore Day. (Publishers Lunch)
The International Literature Festival Berlin will sponsor a worldwide reading September 8 in honor of Edward Snowden. By asking participants to read texts about surveillance, which will be available for download from the festival’s website later this month, the organizers intend to show support for Snowden, ask for European governments to grant asylum to the whistleblower, and seek his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Hartford Friends of Wallace Stevens, a small group of investors who recently signed a purchase agreement for the Connecticut home where the poet lived from 1932 until 1955, plans to raise five hundred thousand dollars to complete the sale and turn the house into a museum. (Hartford Courant)
Journalist Katie Rophie considers whether or not Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume tome, My Struggle—with its digressions into domestic trivialities and the woes of a stay-at-home father—would be as palatable to an American audience were it penned by a woman. (Slate)
