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:

Globe Pequot and Lyons Press let go of roughly twenty-five staff members [2] yesterday. The firings come less than two months after Rowman & Littlefield acquired the press from Morris Communications. (Shelf Awareness)

Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has spoken out for a second time against Marja Mills’s forthcoming memoir [3], The Mockingbird Next Door—published today by Penguin—in which Mills recounts her friendship with Lee and her older sister, Alice. (Guardian)

The first annual Chicago Independent Bookstore Day [4]—for which nine bookstores across the Windy City partnered to draw in customers with author appearances, raffles, discounts, and gifts—gave a boost to several participating retailers over the weekend, with sales up by as much as 150 percent. (Publishers Weekly)

Meanwhile, Diesel Bookstore’s location in Malibu, California [5], will shut its doors this fall due to declining sales and high rent. (Los Angeles Times) 

Following North Carolina governor Pat McCrory’s announcement of the state’s new poet laureate [6], many in the local literary community have expressed disappointment with his decision not to seek input from the North Carolina Arts Council [7] and with his choice of Valerie Macon, a state employee whose two collections of poetry—Shelf Life and Sleeping Rough—were self-published. (WRAL.com, News & Observer)

British novelist David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and the forthcoming The Bone Clocks, is publishing a short story live on Twitter [8]. The story, about a boy who is high on his mother's Valium, can be read here [9], and followed with the hashtag #THERIGHTSORT. [10] (GalleyCat)

Flavorwire lists thirty-five authors—including Elif Batuman, Emma Straub, and Colson Whitehead, among others—with significant Internet presence [11].

Nancy Arroyo Ruffin explains how authors of color seek to create a sense of home [12] through exploring racial identity in their writing. (For Harriet)