The Writer’s News
The Writer’s News keeps you informed about new developments in the writing world, including award and publication announcements, news from AWP and the field, and updates about important literary figures.
-
February 1, 2008
W00t is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2007
An interjection, the double “o” in the word is usually represented by double zeroes. The exclamation is also known to be an acronym for “we owned the other team”—stemming from the gaming community. Read more...
-
February 1, 2008
Writers on Strike
On November 5, 2007, The Writer’s Guild of America went on strike after three months of failed negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Read more...
-
February 1, 2008
Nobel Laureate Lambasts the Web
The New Zeland Herald reports that, Doris Lessing, too ill to attend the Nobel Awards Ceremony in Stockholm, had her publisher read her speech to the attendees. Read more...
-
February 1, 2008
The British Library Acquires Harold Pinter’s Works
According to Times Online, the British Library has acquired thousands of manuscripts, scrapbooks, and letters—most of them unpublished—that made up the personal archives of Britain’s renowned dramatist and Nobel Laureate. Pinter was determined that his papers would not leave Britain after the hue and cry about losing historic archives to America, most notably those of Ted Hughes, the late Poet Laureate, and John Fowles, the novelist. Read more...
-
February 1, 2008
Options for Archiving Library Collections
Though libraries recognize the benefits of digitizing public domain books for online archives, they have hit a fork in the road. Read more...
-
February 1, 2008
NEA Awards Writers More than $1 Million
Publishers Weekly Online reports that the National Endowment for the Arts will award $20.2 million to fund 908 grants. The Arts Endowment will distribute most of the money during FY 2008 to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations across the country through the NEA’s Access to Artistic Excellence category. Read more...
-
February 1, 2008
$3.3 Million Bequest to Southern Methodist University (SMU)
Dr. Laurence Perrine, an English Professor at SMU, died at the age of 80 in 1995. Royalties from his classic textbooks, Sound and Sense and Story and Structure—which were first published in the 1950s and then became the most influential works in American education—continued to add to the estate of his wife Chathrine. Read more...
-
December 1, 2007
British Readers Forsake Good Novels for Mysteries and Gory Thrillers
According to a report in The Raw Story, publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair are bemoaning the fact that British readers are not very interested in the literary novel. Read more...
-
December 1, 2007
Callaloo celebrates its 30th Anniversary at Johns Hopkins
Callaloo celebrated its 30th anniversary with a conference filled with poetry and fiction readings, lectures, conversations, and panel discussions. Read more...
-
December 1, 2007
Oprah Winfrey’s Latest Selection
Gabriel García Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera is Winfrey’s latest book club selection. This is the second time she has chosen Marquez; his One Hundred Years of Solitude was a book club selection in 2004. Read more...
