Saudi men kicked out of book fair for heckling female poet
Amy X. Wang at Quartz reports that a heckler at the Jeddah International Book Fair had the tables turned on him when, instead of rallying the crowd against a female… Read more »
Winner of the 2015 Stephen Spender Prize withdraws entry
There’s trouble at the Stephen Spender Prize—this year’s winner, Allen Prowle, has withdrawn his entry and returned his prize money after being accused of plagiarism. The Stephen Spender Prize rewards… Read more »
Lost Pablo Neruda poems—found and crowdfunded
In June 2014, upon reading about the discovery of new poems by Pablo Neruda, Michael Wiegers, executive editor at the nonprofit poetry publisher Copper Canyon Press, wrote the Neruda Foundation,… Read more »
The scientific theory behind what makes Dr. Seuss funny
A psychology professor at the University of Alberta claims to have found the scientific answer to that age-old question: why is Dr. Seuss so funny? Chris Westbury was conducting research… Read more »
PEN urges Chinese government to free dissident poets Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia
PEN International has called (once again) for the Chinese government to release poet and human rights advocate Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced in 2008 to eleven years in prison for “inciting subversion… Read more »
The Poetry of Trump
Later this month, HarperCollins will publish reporter and humorist Hart Seely’s Bard of the Deal: The Poetry of Donald Trump, a book of poems crafted from interviews, speeches, and tweets… Read more »
When reading can transport you … because there’s a subway chip in the cover
Why bother with a subway pass when you can swipe a book instead? Danny Lewis reports for The Smithsonian that L&PM Editores, São Paolo’s premier pocketbook publisher, is expanding its… Read more »
Los Angeles Public Library to dedicate a branch to poet Wanda Coleman
The Ascot Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library will be dedicated to Wanda Coleman, the woman often referred to as the “unofficial poet laureate” of Los Angeles. According to… Read more »
Long lost—and angry! —Shelley poem found after 200 years
Not long after news broke that the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford had acquired a lost poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, the library’s website crashed. It has been long acknowledged that as an… Read more »
The hero caught reading Citizen on camera during a Trump rally
Have you seen the beautiful images of the woman sitting and reading a book directly behind Donald Trump during one of his—presumably—angry and racist rallies? In case you missed it, the… Read more »