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:
Globe Pequot and Lyons Press let go of roughly twenty-five staff members yesterday. The firings come less than two months after Rowman & Littlefield acquired the press from Morris Communications. (Shelf Awareness)
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has spoken out for a second time against Marja Mills’s forthcoming memoir, The Mockingbird Next Door—published today by Penguin—in which Mills recounts her friendship with Lee and her older sister, Alice. (Guardian)
The first annual Chicago Independent Bookstore Day—for which nine bookstores across the Windy City partnered to draw in customers with author appearances, raffles, discounts, and gifts—gave a boost to several participating retailers over the weekend, with sales up by as much as 150 percent. (Publishers Weekly)
Meanwhile, Diesel Bookstore’s location in Malibu, California, will shut its doors this fall due to declining sales and high rent. (Los Angeles Times)
Following North Carolina governor Pat McCrory’s announcement of the state’s new poet laureate, many in the local literary community have expressed disappointment with his decision not to seek input from the North Carolina Arts Council and with his choice of Valerie Macon, a state employee whose two collections of poetry—Shelf Life and Sleeping Rough—were self-published. (WRAL.com, News & Observer)
British novelist David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and the forthcoming The Bone Clocks, is publishing a short story live on Twitter. The story, about a boy who is high on his mother's Valium, can be read here, and followed with the hashtag #THERIGHTSORT. (GalleyCat)
Flavorwire lists thirty-five authors—including Elif Batuman, Emma Straub, and Colson Whitehead, among others—with significant Internet presence.
Nancy Arroyo Ruffin explains how authors of color seek to create a sense of home through exploring racial identity in their writing. (For Harriet)
