Tonight, just hours before the Olympic Games open in Beijing on Friday, PEN American Center will host “Bringing Down the Great Firewall of China: Silenced Writers Speak on the Eve of the Olympics,” an event to honor the work—and call once again for the release—of more than forty writers and journalists imprisoned by the Chinese government for expressing dissenting views.

The Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Virginians for the Arts Foundation recently announced that Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review has won a prestigous Governor's Award for the Arts. 

Tao Lin, the author of two poetry collections, a novel, and a story collection, last Thursday posted a rather unusual offer on his blog. For two thousand dollars, readers can purchase a 10-percent share of the royalties, including all U.S. serial, reprint, textbook, and film royalties, for his unfinished novel, which is tentatively scheduled for publication next year by Melville House, an independent press in Brooklyn, New York.

Amazon announced on Friday its plans to acquire AbeBooks, the Canada-based online marketplace showcasing the wares of over thirteen thousand booksellers specializing in used, rare, and out-of-print books.

On August 10, a twenty-first century update on the traditonal roving library, the Digital Bookmobile will make its debut in New York City's Central Park, hosted by the New York Public Library.

The Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh's culturally vibrant Oakland neighborhood was hit with a bit of bookish graffiti early Monday morning, much to the chagrin of library staff.

The judges for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction yesterday announced the longlist of finalists. The list features thirteen books, including titles by five first-time authors as well as perennial favorite Salman Rushdie, who earlier this month was awarded the Best of the Booker Award for Midnight's Children (Jonathan Cape, 1981). 

On Sunday, the eve of the tenth anniversary of the death of celebrated Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, an open-air performance of the play The Reconstruction of a Poet was held in Warsaw. The play, originally written as a radio drama, is one of five the poet produced in his life. The event also featured a multimedia installation on three giant video screens, including a selection of poems from Herbert's 1974 book Mr. Cogito, Chris Niedenthal's photos of Poland in the 1970s, and a television interview the poet gave in 1972.