Southern Writer Barry Hannah Dies, March Is National Small Press Month, and More

by Staff
3.2.10

Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today's stories:

In honor of National Small Press Month, the Center for Independent Publishing will host the twenty-second annual Indie Book Fair this weekend in New York City.

A new documentary of the "notoriously media-shy" Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska aired in Poland on Sunday, painting a lively, personal portrait of the eighty-six-year-old with commentary from Woody Allen and Jane Goodall. (Associated Press

Three days before he was to be honored at the seventeenth annual Oxford Conference for the Book, the distinguished Southern writer Barry Hannah died at his home in Mississippi at the age of sixty-seven. (New York Times)

A Chinese author and PEN member was removed from a plane and placed under house arrest as he attempted to travel to a literary festival in Germany. (Press Release

Ryszard Kapuscinski, once voted the greatest journalist of the twentieth century, has been accused of writing fiction in a new biography about his life. (Guardian)

The Lambda Literary Foundation launched a new Web site with lots of new features including an online journal and blog community.

Henry Holt & Company has stopped publication on a book about the Hiroshima bombing after allegations arose over fraudulent sources and the author's credentials. (New York Times)

A Los Angeles poet packed his poems into a Cold War era dummy bomb and went on tour. (Washington Post)

So, where have all the poetry readers gone? Australia, as it turns out. (Publishing Perspectives)