The current Glimmer Train Bulletin features a short essay by Allison Amend with her instructions for a Do-It-Yourself Book Tour. Amend is the author of the acclaimed 2008 story collection Things That Pass for Love. Her novel Stations West publishes this month. Here is the opening of her essay:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that [...]

Yet another reason to read literary journals: they could help you find your soulmate. One Story has a great story up on its blog about how the magazine brought a couple together:
Outside the Harvard Bookstore we prepared to part, making the non-committal noises of people who are never going to see each other again. [...]

Boston-area readers know Harvard Book Store as one of the best independent bookstores in the country. The store hosts author events and readings nearly every night, and the knowledgeable staff is always ready to help should you need a recommendation. Now, they’re encouraging writers as well. In honor of the shortest month, [...]

In my old (and much-missed) neighborhood of Fort Greene in Brooklyn, the fabulous Greenlight Bookstore is doing its part to raise money for Haiti. NYC-based readers, shop at Greenlight today and tomorrow to help! Via the store’s newsletter:
A lot has been given to us at Greenlight Bookstore. It’s high time for us to give [...]

As you know, we’re big fans of Poets & Writers Magazine around here. So we’re excited to announce that this magazine has generously agreed to offer our readers a special subscription rate of only $12. The reason for this offer is to help build support for a new series in P&W called “Inside Indie Bookstores,” [...]

Life in Russia, said author Aleksander Snegirev, at Housing Works’ September 21 Rasskazy event, is uncomfortable, but always interesting. So, too, are the stories in this plump new anthology from Tin House: Arkady Babchenko’s beleaguered soldier returns to Chechnya a page away from German Sadulaev’s lyrical descriptions of Chechnya’s devastated countryside. The binding is a veritable trench across which both narrators peek at each other warily.

NYC-based writers, head to Brooklyn’s newest bookstore, Fort Greene’s Greenlight Books (686 Fulton St., at S. Portland), tonight (Monday, November 23) at 7:30 PM for a special event featuring local authors and the editor of Mentors, Muses, and Monsters, a book that we at FWR are excited to read.
This is also the bookstore’s first [...]

For the past few months, writers at FWR — like those across the literary blogosphere–have been responding to and critiquing the Target-Walmart-Sears-Amazon price-war kerfuffle. Yet outside the publishing and writing worlds, it’s not clear if anyone sees big-box discounting as a Bad Thing; maybe people are too excited about snagging $9 hardback new releases.
Recently, [...]

In the Arts section of today’s New York Times, Motoko Rich reports on the “tit-for-tat price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon [that] accelerated late on Friday afternoon when Wal-Mart shaved another cent off its already rock-bottom prices for hardcover editions of some of the coming holiday season’s biggest potential best sellers, offering them online for [...]

Square Books, the famed independent bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi, celebrates three decades in business this month. Festivities began last Thursday, September 10th, with a special program on Thacker Mountain Radio, which broadcasts a live show made up of “literary readings and an eclectic mix of musical performances” each week from Off Square Books. This most [...]