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Edgar Allan Poe's historic home in Baltimore has been vandalized; author Wanda Coleman has been hospitalized, and is asking for assistance; Jackson Prize-winning poet Henri Cole's dispatch from Paris; and other news.
The Obama family visited an independent bookstore in Virginia this weekend to promote Small Business Saturday; Flavorwire rounded up a collection of "literary late bloomers," including Charles Bukowski, and Deborah Eisenberg; the Los Angeles Review of Books is attempting to raise ten thousand dollars by Friday; and other news.
UPDATE: In the May/June 2011 issue, we reported that arts advocates had successfully rallied to save the Kansas Arts Commission, but late last month governor Sam Brownback shuttered the agency by line-item vetoing its state funding for the next fiscal year.
Arts supporters in Kansas succeeded in their efforts to reverse Governor Sam Brownback’s decision to replace the Kansas Arts Commission with a private foundation.
The latest casualty in the ongoing siege of academic presses and literary magazines in the economic downturn was recorded last fall when Northwestern University announced plans to end the forty-five-year run of its prize-winning journal TriQuarterly as a print publication. After the magazine's final print issue this spring, it will become an online-only, student-run publication.
For seventy-five years Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, has been home to two of the country's most storied literary institutions, LSU Press and the Southern Review. But prestige was not enough to save either one from a 20 percent cut in university subsidy in July.
On September 25, nearly two years after pulling up stakes in New York City's SoHo neighborhood, Poets House opened the doors to its new location in lower Manhattan, kicking off a long-awaited inaugural season of readings, workshops, exhibitions, and outreach programs.
Philadelphia’s fifty-four public libraries—along with its court system, rec centers, and thousands of public employees—were granted a reprieve last Thursday afternoon when the State Senate approved a $700 million relief package for the city. The funding forestalls mayor Michael Nutter’s “Plan C” budget, which, among other cuts, had called for the indefinite suspension of all library services on October 2.
In two weeks, the city that once enjoyed the largest book circulation in the world could find itself entirely without public libraries. The Free Library of Philadelphia announced earlier this month that unless the State Legislature approves the city’s budgetary requests, all branch, regional, and central libraries will close their doors and suspend programming effective Friday, October 2.
The 2010 Dodge Poetry Festival will be held after all. Seven months after Dodge Foundation CEO David Grant announced the suspension of the popular biennial event, citing shrinking assets and increasing venue costs, the New York Times reports that the organization is on track to secure a new hosting partner by September.
