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On February 2, over 170 writers, editors, agents, and publishers from five continents attended a two-day writers conference in Geneva, Switzerland—an intensive weekend of workshops, readings, panel discussions, and networking.
Nominees for the annual National Book Critics Circle Awards were announced on January 28.
Michael P. Hammond, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, died on January 29 of what appeared to be natural causes. He was 69. Hammond had officially assumed his duties as chairman on January 22.
The big just got bigger in the book distribution industry.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Hallmark bought
Maya Angelou.
Historian Stephen Ambrose has had a lot of explaining to do lately. The bestselling author is accused of copying passages from a source without attribution in four of his more than 20 published books.
Beginning next fall, creative writers will be able to workshop their way to graduate degrees at Georgia College & State University, the liberal arts college in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Ethiopian exile Nega Mezlekia's memoir, Notes From the Hyena's Belly, details his remarkable boyhood in Jijiga, a city in the eastern part of the Horn of Africa built on a "dry, sandless desert where even the smallest wind creates devils—whirlwinds of dust that rise high into the heavens and are visible from miles away."
A number of literary magazines—APR, Fence, McSweeney's, Open City, Pearl, Pleiades, and Verse—have in recent years pursued book publishing ventures, usually ones that include an annual book contest. Putting an electronic twist on that trend is the bimonthly online literary magazine Slope. This spring, founding editor Ethan Paquin is making the jump from Web journal to print press by launching Slope Editions, which will publish two or three books of poetry annually.
The Great Books Foundation, which for more than 50 years has been reminding the public that a book replete with sophisticated ideas and a "good read" are not mutually exclusive, has brought that same philosophy to a new magazine. The Common Review aims to deliver the riches of intellectual engagement to a general reading audience.
