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:

Last night on 60 Minutes, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos revealed a delivery system in the works called Prime Air, in which programmed drones deliver goods [2]. (Huffington Post)

“Self-loathing is in the writer’s blood [3]. When you’re an artist of any kind, there’s no certainty that what you’re working on won’t be a complete failure.” Michele Filgate considers advice from Jonathan Franzen, Dani Shapiro, Alexander Chee, Elissa Schappell, and others regarding the “vicious trap of self-defeat” that many writers experience. (Salon)

In the New Yorker, Nathan Heller remembers the life and work of Peter Kaplan [4]. The former New York Observer editor died Friday at age fifty-nine.

Kat Stoeffel speaks with poet Jynne Dilling Martin, who is currently Antarctic artist-in-residence [5] through a program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. (New York)

With the holiday shopping season upon us, Jason Diamond rounds up the best books this year to give as gifts [6], including John Updike’s The Collected Stories. (Flavorwire)

Meanwhile, to usher in Small Business Saturday, President Obama visited his local independent bookstore [7] and picked up James Salter’s All That Is and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, among several others. (Los Angeles Times)

André Schiffrin, veteran Pantheon editor, founder of independent publisher New Press [8], and outspoken critic of the publishing industry, passed away in France on Sunday. (New York Times)