A sampling of budget itineraries for do-it-yourself retreats in Boston, Massachusetts; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Savannah, Georgia; and Taos, New Mexico.

Another literary casualty of the ailing market, the International Poetry Forum (IPF) in Pittsburgh will cease its poetry programming after this season.

Margaret Atwood has cancelled her plans to attend the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature (EAIFL) in Dubai after learning that British author Geraldine Bedell was told by organizers that she could not be a part of the event because one of the characters in her forthcoming novel, The Gulf Between Us, is gay.

Isobel Abulhoul, director of the new Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature (EAIFL), recently informed British novelist Geraldine Bedell that she could not be a part of the event because one of the characters in her forthcoming novel is gay.

After a week of uncertainty, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced today that members of the House and Senate conference committee have negotiated to keep the fifty million dollars that the House of Representatives had designated for the NEA in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The funding, which the House approved on January 28 as part of the stimulus package put forward by president Barack Obama, was cut from the Senate's version of the bill last Friday.

Two months after Markus Dohle announced a dramatic restructuring of Random House imprints, a move that eliminated Stephen Rubin's position as publisher of Doubleday Publishing Group, the Random House chairman yesterday named Rubin publisher at large.

Page Six Magazine, the New York Post's celebrity and gossip supplement, published on Monday a feature in which the editors named the fifty "hottest bachelors" in New York City. Among the rock stars, real estate moguls, and fashionistas on the list are two authors, Salman Rushdie and Keith Gessen.

Publishing giant HarperCollins joined the industry-wide restructuring movement on Tuesday, announcing the closing of an imprint and the dismissal of two of its top executives.