Category: words

• Up-and-coming literary magazines are moving into the world of book publishing – and bringing new business models, not to mention a rare optimism and sense of fun, with them. “While they’re not the first literary magazines to try their hand at book publishing, these three [‘Open City,’ ‘McSweeney’s,’ and ‘Fence’] bring a new sensibility – and a new urgency – to the pursuit.” – Village Voice Literary Supplement

• A manuscript by the creators of the “Curious George” series was found long after the authors’ deaths in a university library. Houghton Mifflin will release the new tales this fall, about an adventurous penguin who was actually invented before Curious George but never published. – NPR [Real audio file]

Harvard finds two long lost poems by Rubén Darío considered by some to be “the greatest Latin American poet of all time.” The find is causing a big stir in Spanish literary circles. “At a time when Latin America is plagued by violence and economic problems, Rubén Darío, who dreamed we would be improved, returns.” – New York Times

“From Amarillo, Tex., to Wooster, Ohio, from Seattle to St. Petersburg, Fla., the season’s regional book festivals are increasingly showing prime-time potential – and racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sales every year.” – Inside.com

New study says good times are ahead for the publishing industry. “The study projects that by ’04 electronic books (defined as e-books, print on-demand titles and materials downloaded from the Internet) will comprise 26% of all unit sales, and that consumer spending will hit $5.4 billion, up from a projected $367 million in spending in 2000.” – Publishers Weekly

Why don’t The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Talk magazines have their stories on the web? “In an age when people are becoming more and more tech-savvy, these publications are placing their bets that readers will be content to go to their local bodega for their latest literary or high-society gossip fix.” – Wired

“Poetry readings are now a major part of our literary landscape. Most American poets reach wider audiences at readings than through publishing. In the days before poetry readings became so ubiquitous, however, some of our best poets recorded their work.” – Public Arts

Canadian poet Anne Carson is a recluse, not given to public contact with the outside world. So you have to piece together her life from other sources: “it’s known that she teaches classics at McGill University; that she won the 1996 Lannan Award, the 1997 Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998, among others, and that earlier this year, she received the McArthur Foundation ‘Genius’ Award worth $500,000 (U.S.). Michael Ondaatje says she is ‘the most exciting poet writing in English today’. Susan Sontag puts her in a ‘less-than-fingers-on-one-hand group of writers’.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Harry Potter, Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”, John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” were among the most-singled-out books adults wanted removed from American library shelves in the 1990s says the American Library Association. – Ottawa Citizen (AP)

Independent bookstores have discovered that the internet offers them a way of fighting back against the big superstore retailers. Turns out personal service counts on the web as well. – Wired