The Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize, has gone to a high school biology teacher from Lyon, Alexis Jenni, for his six-hundred page debut novel, The French Art of War. He might not be quitting his day job soon, though: The Goncourt only comes with a ten euro honorarium.
Self-publishing websites are huge in China, attracting more than forty percent of all Chinese internet users every month.
The New York Times profiles the Wilde Boys Salon, a “roving salon for self-described queer poets at which attendees lounge fetchingly and flirtation comes in the guise of academic one-upmanship,” An attempt to recreate the downtown poetry culture of the 50s and 60s, the Wilde Boys has thus far featured Mark Doty, Edmund White, Michael Cunningham and John Ashbery. “I invited the cute gay poets right away,” explained founder Alex Dimitrov. “I sort of had a list of gays that I wanted to come, and some of them that I wanted to sleep with.”
Amazon has launched a Kindle lending library that lets its Prime Members “borrow” e-books for a month before they disappear. This is Amazon’s first attempt at a virtual library, despite the fact that none of the “big six" publishers—Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Hachette—have agreed to participate.
Princeton University Press will become the first academic press to release Kindle Singles.
