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Touch Press's new iPad app, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, presents all 154 sonnets along with notes, commentary, and interviews with experts, plus captivating peformances by full-throated actors such as Patrick Stewart and, seen here reading Sonnet 130, Stephen Fry.
According to a joint report from the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group, sales from e-books more than doubled from 2010 to 2011; education company Pearson announced today it will purchase self-publisher Author Solutions for over one hundred million dollars; Knopf reports sales of Cheryl Strayed's Wild have tripled since Oprah Winfrey announced the revival of her book club; and other news.
In the latest video for Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Luca Dipierro animates and scores a sentence from "The Devil's Treasure" by Mary Gaitskill. The sentence: "Meanwhile, women came flying at him, loving him, swarming like hornets, beautiful with love, drunk with love, near-crazy with love, sick with it, buzzing all around him, looking for the beautiful soul the sensed unerringly."
GalleyCat advises writers on using SoundCloud; Chen Guangcheng, the blind dissident who escaped house arrest in China, will publish a memoir with Henry Holt; Maria Bustillos explains how George Orwell taught her what to read next; and other news.
In this report from the Pulitzer Center, Eliza Griswold explores the art of writing landai poetry in Afghanistan and the importance of these poems to Afghan women. "While in traditional Afghan society women must keep their passions secret, the landai poetry serves as an outlet from their constricted lives."
The founding editor of Oxford American magazine, Marc Smirnoff, and its long-time managing editor, Carol Ann Fitzgerald, are no longer associated with the publication; author Walter Kirn details his personal history with Mormonism; designer Dinah Fried has created famous literary meals from the pages of Salinger, Melville, and others, and other news.
Performed by Steve Connell and Sekou Andrews, The Word Begins follows two men who discover "the power of words to define love, faith, race, and humanity in America." Directed by Robert Egan, the combination of theater, spoken word, and comedy show is playing at Brooklyn's Hip Hop Theater Festival.
In June 2012, Matthew and Michael Dickman released Fifty American Plays (Poems) (Copper Canyon Press), a book of poem-plays about the fifty American states. Choose a state (or region or country outside of the United States) that you feel a deep connection to and write a poem about it. Give the reader a sense of the landscape and mood you associate with the place. As an additional challenge, try to convey a sense of the location without ever naming it in the poem.
As Tolstoy's axiom goes, "All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town." Freewrite for ten minutes about each of these premises, then turn one—or both—into an essay.
Write a piece of flash fiction in the style and form of a recipe. In composing the preparation steps, reveal bits of the fictional recipe-writer’s life. Try to give the reader a sense of the person behind the recipe by giving an emotional dimension to the instructions. For inspiration, read Steve Himmer’s “How to Make Potato Salad.”
