technology

Massive open online courses, which are offered for free online to anyone in the world, provide a new alternative to students looking for an education in the arts.

Nikki Giovanni discusses Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; Amazon Publishing’s Laurence Kirshbaum has been accused by a prospective employee of sexual assault; an audio clip was released of Margaret Salinger confirming her father J. D. Salinger had manuscripts ready for publication; and other news.

Joshua Rothman considers a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Michele Filgate recounts how she accidentally set Stephen King’s Insomnia aflame; Jennie Yabroff parses the distinction between autobiography and memoir; and other news.

Bookstore sales fell 9.5 percent in June; Wattpad recently announced a crowd-sourced funding service for its authors; Carol Muske-Dukes recounts John Cheever’s 1977 visit with inmates at Sing Sing; and other news.

Veteran video-game developer Kent Hudson has created a new game called The Novelist; Michelle Dean created a pop-culture feminist syllabus of fifty books, films, music, and artists to consider; Terry Gross recently spoke with memoirist Piper Kerman about Orange is the New Black; and other news.

Future Book examines Amazon’s pricing strategies; Margo Rabb explores the experience of meeting literary heroes; Scientific American looks at the link between creativity and eccentricity; and other news.

Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch has resigned; Vikram Seth asked to return a $1.7 million advance; poet David Shook hopes to fund a Poetry Drone that will drop poems instead of bombs; and other news.

Zeljka Marosevic details what it was like to work for Victoria Barnsley, who announced yesterday she is leaving HarperCollins; Amit Majmudar describes how he reads the work of Byron in his dreams; Slate features a coded World War I postcard written by poet Wilfred Owen; and other news.

Ian Buruma looks at Chinese dissident Liao Yiwu’s harrowing new memoir; Digital Book World says not to count out Barnes & Noble; Book Riot visits the oldest bookstore in the world; and other news.

Barnes & Noble announced it’s discontinuing the Nook Tablet; industry insiders share thoughts on the Random House and Penguin merger; France is reportedly considering a ban on some of Amazon's practices; and other news.