News Around the Net

A 10 year old with cerebral palsy wins a poetry award. This is the coolest thing ever. I think you should probably read it.

Amazon gets the exclusive rights to sell Updike, Nabakov, Mailer and Roth ebooks. I really hope this isn't the beginning of a trend for this squabble between Amazon and Apple and everyone else. If there's one thing that will ruin ebooks, it's this hording of books for one device or another. Sigh.

On basically the opposite side of the spectrum from the ebook hording situation: NPR's pro-libraries argument. Sharing books! Imagine that!

I know what you're thinking. We haven't had a bad poetry link up here in such a long time. Well, here's a compendium of awful Twitter poetry. Apparently not everyone on Twitter is a literary genius. I believe Alanis said it best, you live, you learn. Yes. That just happened.

"Oh yeah, remember that time your poetry was accepted into The Paris Review? Yeah. That was cool, right? Pretty awesome all around, I'd say. Well, we changed our minds." New editor of The Paris Review, Lorin Stein, sent emails to at least three poets who had been accepted by previous editors to let them know they were no longer a part of the magazine. Cold.

Salman Rushdie is writing a memoir about the time he spent in hiding from the fatwa issued against him after Satanic Verses. Yes, I would read this.

Here's a list of 11 literary holidays that I knew nothing about. This week has been Hemingway week and I didn't even know it! Damn!