Stephen King Announces Sequel to The Shining, Paulo Coelho Trashes Joyce's Ulysses, and More

by
Evan Smith Rakoff
8.6.12

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 fact that my child is dying (people rarely phrase it this way, it’s always a watered-down description) will apparently transform me into a metal that also appears in another pop song." Emily Rapp writes of grief, and Yaddo. (Rumpus)

Amazon is now selling e-books in the United Kingdom in greater numbers than print. (TechCrunch)

Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho has choice words for James Joyce's Ulysses. (Guardian)

A new web start-up, Togather.com, intends to help authors revive the book tour via crowdsourcing. (In recent years, publishers have dramatically scaled back author tours to save costs.) (Digital Book World)

Stephen King announced he will deliver a sequel to his 1977 best-seller, The Shining. (Los Angeles Times)

Sarah Miller writes of literally the worst word in the world. (Awl)

In case you missed this Slate essay on Friday suggesting social media's literary community is too nice—it made Twitter all aflutter.

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles weighed in on the kerfuffle; Roxane Gay disputes the premise at Salon; and novelist Emma Straub, who was used as an example in the Slate piece, answered the criticism directly via her blog.

Meanwhile, Adam Sternbergh, at the New York Times Magazine's 6th Floor blog, suggests a list of names to consider in lieu of "Twitterverse," such as Twitlandia.