Daily News from Poets & Writers

HarperCollins has canceled the publication of J. G. Ballard’s last book following the author’s death on Sunday, April 19. Conversations, formerly slated for release in September, was to have recounted discussions between Ballard and his oncologist. The project stalled after Ballard, who was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in 2006, became too ill to work. 

Two men who were arrested last September on charges of conspiring to firebomb the London home of the publisher of a controversial novel about a wife of the prophet Muhammad have pleaded guilty.

PEN Slovakia, a division of International PEN, has denounced "from an ethical and moral point of view" a Slovakian literary journal for publishing poems by indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

Yesterday, less than three months after a round of layoffs at Publishers Weekly that resulted in the departure of editor Sara Nelson, the industry trade magazine's parent company, Reed Business Information, laid off three more editors.

Poets Jorie Graham and Yusef Komunyakaa and fiction writers T. C. Boyle and Richard Price will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in a ceremony next month.

The United States Postal Service unveiled a first-class stamp yesterday honoring American author and former postal employee Richard Wright. The dedication took place in the lobby of the Chicago Main Post Office, just across the street from the building where the author of Native Son once worked as a letter sorter. 

Lloyd Jassin, chairman of the executive committee and the advisory counsel of the New York Center for Independent Publishing (NYCIP), has resigned from his posts at the organization.

Tony Lucki, CEO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, announced in a recent memo to staff that he will retire from his position on April 15. Lucki, who will maintain his association with HMH as chairman of the company, will be succeeded by Barry O’Callaghan, the current chair of HMH’s Dublin-based parent corporation, Education Media & Publishing Group.

HarperCollins is sponsoring a contest for the best video book trailer that promotes Elmore Leonard's forthcoming novel Road Dogs. The publisher is seeking a video between thirty seconds and two minutes "that captures the spirit" of the novel. "It should have intrigue, edge, and energy."

The lobbying group Americans for the Arts, in conjunction with the Congressional Arts Caucus, which is comprised of nearly two hundred members of the House of Representatives from more than forty states, is in Washington, D.C. today to celebrate the twenty-second annual Arts Advocacy Day and to ask Congress to increase the annual appropriation for the National Endowment for the Arts. A recent omnibus appropriation bill included $155 million for the NEA, but the group plans to ask for $200 million.

The fifth annual PEN Word Voices festival will kick off in New York City on April 28, featuring sixty events with writers from forty countries, PEN American Center announced on Wednesday.