Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest [2], now in its twenty-eighth year, honors "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." This year's grand-prize winner has been announced along with winners in several sub-categories. The winning sentence, to give you an idea, ends with "...Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."  

According to the New York Times [3], "Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the Web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country." 

The Independent [4] reports on the rise of "Dalit lit," which it calls "a quiet cultural revolution sweeping India's literary establishment." According to Wikipedia, "Dalit is a self-designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as untouchable."

Amazon's Web site went down for a few hours yesterday, and though service has now been restored a few novelists saw their book publicity efforts derailed by the glitch. (GalleyCat [5])

A two-minute film dramatizing the "power of reading" won two awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Check out the video at Publishing Perspectives [6]. 

Meet Paolo Javier, the new poet laureate of Queens, New York. (New York Daily News [7])

Best-selling Oprah Book Club author Jacquelyn Mitchard told Aol News [8] that she has been virtually wiped out by a $190 million Ponzi scheme.

Muse Books, an indie bookseller in Florida, will celebrate its thirtieth year in business tomorrow. "A community without a bookstore is like a community without a heart," the owner told the Daytona Beach News-Journal [9].