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:
Anybody want to buy Barnes & Noble? The company's board put it up for sale on Tuesday. (Wall Street Journal [2])
In other bricks-and-morter bookseller news, Borders laid off about one hundred workers at its distribution facility in Tennessee, adding to the one hundred twenty jobs cut last year. (Nashville Business Journal [3])
A possible film adaptation of A. Scott Berg's National Book Award-winning 1978 biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius received a huge boost this week when Sean Penn expressed interest in the role and began "talks" to star as the famed editor who worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. (Hollywood Reporter [4])
A new survey found that library use has increased 57 percent in the last decade in Seattle, which, according to the city librarian, is continually ranked "as the most literate city in the nation." (Seattle Times [5])
The Winnipeg International Writers Festival [6] in Canada launches on September 19 for a week of readings, lectures, interviews, and conversations. (Winnipeg Free Press [7])
The founder of PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Book Group, opined in the Atlantic [8] that while he thinks Andrew Wylie's controversial e-book rights deal with Amazon "has infurated publishers and done his authors no favors," the deal has done the industry a service by bringing the issue of e-book rights to the forefront.
Five men were arrested in Kentucky on Friday for conducting a door-to-door bookselling scam. (Lexington Herald-Leader [9])
A huge archive of Winston Churchill's writing is to be made available online by the Churchill College in Cambridge, England, by 2012. (Independent [10])