writers and family

Books & Brews brings booze to a new venue in Indiana; Adam Zagajewski on balancing joy with sadness; Vladimir Putin’s fictional presence; and other news.

Amazon has launched a Kindle Store in Australia; Anthony Burgess’s estate has contracted with David Higham Associates to represent the late author’s work; a recent PEN America survey suggests writers are wary of government surveillance; and other news.

A new book reports that Amazon’s stance toward small publishers “was called the Gazelle Project after Mr. Bezos said Amazon ‘should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle’”; Hector Tobar looks at how Amazon and other online booksellers are reacting to compaints over pornographic content; Open Culture found an image of Mark Twain with Nikola Tesla; and other news.

Random House will release eight Norman Mailer e-books for the first time; GalleyCat details a nonfiction query that was rejected seventy-five times before it landed an agent; Pankaj Mishra and Jennifer Szalai discuss radical politics in contemporary fiction; and other news.

Roxane Gay highlights the slight amount of book review coverage for writers of color; Cheryl Strayed revealed how her bestselling memoir Wild introduced her to a half-sister; Harper Lee settled with her former agent over the rights to To Kill a Mockingbird; 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.