Thirteen-year-old Arvind Mahankali, a resident of New York, won the National Spelling Bee on Thursday for correctly spelling 'knaidel': a small mass of leavened dough.
Don Share has been named editor of Poetry Magazine, a position he will take over from Christian Wiman. A published poet and senior editor of the magazine, Share will be the twelth editor in Poetry’s 101-year history.
On Wednesday, Feminist Press and NYU's Fales Library released The Riot Grrl Collection, an assemblage of ephemera from the feminist underground punk movement that took hold in the nineties. The book was launched with Johanna Fateman, Lisa Darms, and Le Tigre lead singer Kathleen Hanna, who greeted the event with surprise. “It’s really weird to be in an archive right now, reading this ... it’s just really strange and yet totally awesome, because this shit could’ve ended up in garbage bags,” Hanna told the audience.
During a panel at BookExpo, Malcolm Gladwell shared his thoughts on the renovation of the flagship 42nd Street New York Public Library Branch, and they were not positive: “Every time I turn around, there’s some new extravagant renovation going on in the main building. Why? In my mind, the New York Public Library should be focused on keeping small libraries open, on its branches all over the city,” Gladwell remarked, then adding that “luxury condos would look wonderful there. Go back into the business of reaching people who do not have access to books. And that is not on the corner of 42nd and Fifth.”
Amazon has announced that it will open a major London office later this year that will be big enough to accomodate 1,600 employees.
Canadian publisher Arsenal Pulp Press is rushing its translation of the French graphic novel Blue is the Warmest Color after the book’s adaptation won the top prize at Cannes last week.
