President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have organized a poetry night at the White House, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, May 11. Readers and performers include Elizabeth Alexander, who read at Obama’s inauguration; former U.S. poet laureates Billy Collins and Rita Dove; musicians Common, Aimee Mann, and Jill Scott; and conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith, whose 2007 book Traffic transcribes twenty-four hours of traffic reports from New York AM radio station 1010 WINS. The participants will also offer a workshop for students.
The Baffler is back. Thomas Frank, who co-founded the magazine in 1988, will step down as editor in chief, with critic and author John H. Summers taking the helm.
Tonight, Adam Levin, author of The Instructions, won the New York Public Library's Young Lion's Award, which was hosted by Ethan Hawke, Billy Crudup, and Martha Plimpton.
Wired magazine mines advice from Write More Good, the mock style guide written by the mysterious group who bring you the @FakeAPStylebook Twitter feed, to tell you “how to write an acerbic book review.”
The New Yorker becomes the first Conde Nast publication that allows you to subscribe monthly to its iPad app.
Daniel Pinchbeck—a cofounder of Open City magazine and the author of the hallucinogen-spiked nonfiction book Breaking Open the Head—is launching Evolver Editions, a new publishing imprint, in July. Pinchbeck’s latest book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, used shamanistic prophecies to predict that a massive shift in human consciousness will occur in about a year and a half (this will somehow involve a feathered serpent), and Evolver Editions will carry on his interest in spiritual transformation in the midst of global meltdown. It’s first title will be Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein. The imprint’s titles will be distributed by Random House.
