Sarah Weinman continues her search for distinctive new literary voices with a profile of Charles Yu. (The Daily Beast)

Library of Congress archivist Alan Bisbort offers a “sweeping summary of the prison-writing genre, and the therapeutic invention that once supported the genre.” (Literary Kicks)

Geoffrey A. Fowler looks at the twists and turns of finding the right eBookstore. (Wall Street Journal)

The continued posthumous success of Stieg Larsson opens the door for a wave of Nordic crime fiction. (Reuters)

“Drugstore Cowboy” James Fogle is apparently back up to his old tricks. (AP)

Alison Flood, inspired by a man who has “committed the whole of “Paradise Lost” to memory,” seeks out some verse of her own worthy of memorizing. (Guardian Books Blog)

In the wake of unsuccessful settlement talks, Mian Mian’s lawsuit against Google to proceed. (AP)

M. Rebekah Otto pays tribute to Ugly Duckling Press. (The Rumpus)

Jason Boog continues his coverage of BookExpo America 2010. (GalleyCat)

“On this day in 1907 Rachel Carson was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her homestead is now a museum and educational center, though it includes only one of the sixty-five acres upon which Carson learned the life-lesson that she would teach the world: “The lasting pleasures of contact with the natural world are not reserved for scientists but are available to anyone who will place himself under the influence of earth, sea, and sky, and their amazing life.”" (Today in Literature)

Early on in the life of AuthorScoop, we set up a forum so that our readers would have a place to visit and discuss not only the stories posted here, but other subjects of interest to writers as well. Our heart was in the right place, but our readership was pretty small back then, so the forums never really took off.

Fortunately, we’ve built up a bit of a reader base since then, so in true hardheaded fashion, I’ve dusted off the forum, done a little spring cleaning and opened up the doors.

We’ll see how it goes. To pop over, just click here or feel free to hit my horribly ugly (but undeniably functional) “AuthorScoop Forums” button on your right.

Hope to see you there.

“A day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self.”

-Charles Dickens

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Author Robert McCrum traces the English language’s ascendancy, to funny and pointed ends, in GLOBBISH.

The Washington Post comes ’round to agreeing with a Holden Caulfied comparison in Sam Munson’s THE NOVEMBER CRIMINALS.

Comic book reviews from robot6 are a good mid-week staple.

And the British Chess Magazine posts a list of new chess books up for review.

The Bat Segundo Show goes to BookExpo America and tries to find out why the government is there:

In 2005, when I delved back into my writing, I found, to my delight, a kindred spirit who was willing to do a bit of cyber hand-holding, critique, and long-distance brain surgery via email.  A little basic math let me calculate and factor in the timezone difference, and then basic decency would, now and again when I’d let it, also remind me that other people have lives.  But even then, sometimes I was impatient to receive replies to my messages.  Occasionally, I’d even drop reasonably mild hints about my antsy pants.  That was frickin’ rude.

And I grew out of it.

Victoria Strauss, author, critic, and part of the invaluable watchdog team over at Writer Beware, has encountered a fellow who takes a blue ribbon for his cheek.  He contacted her for professional advice, but she didn’t hop to it in the timeliness to which he is evidently accustomed.

Ms. Strauss, who I’ve corresponded with myself, is a generous woman.  So, she’s taken this sow’s ear and made a silk blog post of it - a little gem of a reminder to all the hopefuls out there.  She was kind enough not to name her muse on this one, but I hope his ears are burning in shame as we talk about him.

Have a look.

And if someone out there has provided advice, guidance, pep talks, and/or a shoulder to cry on, take a second and shoot them a kind thought, a friendly email, or hell, send ‘em a fruit basket.  It’s a lonely business, this.  Allies are worth their weight in gold ink.

Writer, actress and comedienne Tina Fey will receive the 2010 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. (Washington Post)

Neal Stephenson is launching an interactive novel for the iPad. (CNET)

Joe McGinniss gets close to his book subject by moving in next door to Sarah Palin. (Gawker)

Keillor: “When everyone’s a writer, no one is.” (Baltimore Sun)

Jason Boog serves up some BookExpo America coverage. (GalleyCat)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt acquires the rights to a 2012 biography of Barbra Streisand. (Publishers Weekly)

Take a journey through the story of publishing in the 20th century. (The Guardian)

Poetry? There’s an app for that. (The Poetry Foundation)

The 2010 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize has been awarded to Ian Thomson for The Dead Yard—Tales of Modern Jamaica. (Royal Society of Literature)

The 2010 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize shortlist has been announced. (The Samuel Johnson Prize)

M.A. Orthofer lists out the five fiction and five non-fiction finalists for the the 23rd annual Florence Gould Foundation and the French-American Foundation Translation Prizes. (The Literary Saloon)

The New Republic digs back through its archives and presents a compelling 1941 essay by Nabokov, entitled “The Art of Translation.”  (TNR)

“On this day in 1891, Edith Wharton’s first published story, “Mrs. Manstey’s View,” was accepted by Scribner’s Magazine. Wharton’s story did not come from the write-about-what-you-know school: she was twenty-nine, brought up in wealth and high society, recently married to a prominent banker, and as opposite to her elderly, destitute heroine as she was to being a struggling young writer.” (Today in Literature)

“A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.”

-John Updike

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Andrew Grant visited with us just a few weeks ago and today I find that his latest, DIE TWICE, gets a great review at BookReporter.com.

John Grisham’s latest goes for the younger set with a thirteen year old protagonist in THEODORE BOONE: KID LAWYER.

Heritage.com is all smiles over Louis Sachar’s bridge (the game, not the span) tale, THE CARDTURNER: A NOVEL ABOUT A KING, A QUEEN, AND A JOKER.

And The Christian Science Monitor’s Summer Reading Guide is a good place to take stock of your to-be-read list.

The newest mystery from Delacorte Press, THE WHOLE WORLD, is also author, Emily Winslow’s, fiction debut.  Her life’s experience on both sides of the Atlantic Pond bring a ring of firsthand knowledge to the characters and the university life at Cambridge.  Busy bogging, signing, and gearing up for the US release rush, we’re lucky to have snagged our 5 minutes in all the hubbub.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Emily: A logic puzzle for Games magazine. I’d grown up reading the magazine, and ended up writing for them after college. The editor gave me a lot of freedom to experiment, which was wonderful.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Emily: THE WHOLE WORLD is set in Cambridge, England, narrated by five characters affected by the disappearance of a popular graduate student. It’s a mystery, and it’s an exploration of how expectations and assumptions limit what each characters is able to perceive and understand about the circumstances they share.

I loved writing it, and researching it. We had just moved to Cambridge from the States, and there was so much I wanted to tell everyone back home about this strange place. And so much I needed to figure out to be able to navigate life here! It’s British, but more specifically it’s “Cambridge”: academic, international, and with a population in annual flux, as students arrive and graduate and fellowships begin and end.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Emily: My husband. We homeschool our kids, and he teaches/plays with them until noon most days, which is when I write. Then he goes to work, as CTO of a technical company, and I take over with the boys. We meet up in the evening, on the couch, after the kids are in bed. Skyping the California office for him; TV for me; and footrubs! I love the footrubs.

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Emily: I used to do my best writing at night, after ideas percolated all day during my dayjob. I guess the energy I used at work and the energy I needed to write with were different. Now that my dayjob is my kids, I find my creative energy is all used up after a day with them. My nights are no good any more. So, morning it is.

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Emily: Join the AbsoluteWrite Forums.  Get educated about the business of writing, so it doesn’t take you by surprise when you’re ready to leap into the professional fray.

THE WHOLE WORLD hits bookstores in the US this week.  Find it here, there, and everywhere with this handy link.  And keep up with Emily with the latest updates on her website and blog.

From the YouTube description:

Interview with children’s book author and illustrator Richard Egielski and his wife Denise, who is also an illustrator:

The murder of poet Roque Dalton 35 years ago is sending fresh shock waves through El Salvador’s new government. (LATimes)

Grace Talusan profiles Man Asian Prize winner Miguel Syjuco as he considers “the fate of Filipino writing in the American literary world.” (The Rumpus)

Regan McMahon looks at how some authors are finding their way into print without relying on the traditional publishing model. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Take a leisurely stroll through “the 11 greatest literary feuds.” (The Daily Beast)

Neil Gaiman writes an episode of Dr. Who. (GalleyCat)

Andrew Boryga recommends the hip-hop approach for writers. (Lit Drift)

Poetry lovers commemorating the 70th anniversary of the birth of poet Josef Brodsky. (Xinhua)

Carol Rumens is back with a new poem of the week: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portugese, No. 43.” (Guardian Books Blog)

R.I.P. Michael Kuchwara, theater writer. (NYTimes)

“On this day in 1938 Raymond Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, the family moving three years later to Yakima, Washington. Carver’s biographical essay, “My Father’s Life,” tells about his upbringing what his highly-acclaimed stories tell about others: the grind of poverty, the ruin of alcohol, the endless threat of breakdown and break-up, the resolve of those who keep going when their only sure direction is down.” (Today in Literature)

“To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be that it comes as a profound outrage to encounter death, stubbornly unspinnable, only and immutably itself.”

-Tana French

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Being made look foolish has rarely been so interesting.  I may have to sign up.  Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons give us THE INVISIBLE GORILLA: AND OTHER WAYS OUR INSTITUTIONS DECEIVE US.

Professor Norman Stone takes us all to school with THE ATLANTIC AND ITS ENEMIES: A HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR.

It’s difficult, but you always knew it would be.  Still, Salon Magazine approves of QUANTUM: EINSTEIN, BOHR, AND THE GREAT DEBATE ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY, by Manjit Kumar.

Somali, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, chronicles a transformation in NOMAD: FROM ISLAM TO AMERICA - A PERSONAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS.

Courtesy of Green Apple Books…

Be careful when you ask Lemony Snicket to sign your Kindle:

Amy Cavanaugh chats it up with Kay Ryan, as her tenure as US poet laureate winds down. (Washington City Paper)

Pandigital joins the (over)crowded eReader market with the Novel. (San Francisco Chronicle)

On the heels of the “Lost Booker,” Robert McCrum surveys other forgotten classics that should be remembered. (Guardian Books Blog)

“The Rumpus Glitter Twins” recap the glamor of the “One Story” Debutante Ball. (The Rumpus)

Lucas Wittman surveys 5 books that could save the world. (The Daily Beast)

ECW Press to join forces with online lit mag “Joyland” in launching a new eBook imprint this fall. (Publishers Weekly)

Valerie Russ profiles poet Nikki Giovanni. (Philadelphia Daily News)

R.I.P. Martin Gardner, author and thinker. (NYTimes)

“On this day in 1951 Carson McCullers’s The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Works was published. Included in this omnibus edition were most of the pieces upon which her reputation now stands, and the critics used the occasion to confirm McCullers as one of America’s most important contemporary writers, one who gave her regional settings and characters “their Homeric moment in a universal tragedy.”" (Today in Literature)

“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

-Harper Lee

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The Dallas Morning News sighs that THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST ends Stieg Larsson’s posthumously published series with a fizzle, not a bang.

Real world conflicts, from international crises to family disputes, are dissected in Robert Mnookin’s (who also gets the difficult-to-imagine-how-to-pronounce-name-of-the-day award) BARGAINING WITH THE DEVIL: WHEN TO NEGOTIATE, WHEN TO FIGHT.

When you look at it from a bit of a distance, it really is a silly fad - BOTTLED & SOLD: THE STORY BEHIND OUR OBSESSION WITH BOTTLED WATER, by Peter H. Gleick.

Fiction rooted in reality, and most particularly in a reality known intimately by author Ann Hood, gives verisimilitude to a novel of Chinese adoption, THE RED THREAD.

From the TEDTalksDirector YouTube description:

Poet C.K. Williams reads his work at TED2001. As he colors scenes of childhood resentments, college loves, odd neighbors and the literal death of youth, he reminds us of the unique challenges of living.

Allen M. Jalon chats it up with poet C.K. Williams on “life, darkness, 9/11 and Monet.” (LATimes)

Mark Twain’s autobiography to be published (finally) 100 years after his death, as stipulated by the author. (The Independent)

How to get publishers’ attention in the digital age. (Times Online)

Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong to be adapted into West End play starring Sienna Miller. (Telegraph)

Novelist Junot Diaz has been elected the Pulitzer Prize Board. (NY1.com)

Craig Fehrman surveys the memoirs of America’s first ladies. (NYTimes)

Nikola Krastev looks at the new generation of Russian writers. (Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty)

Katie Allen reports on the reading public’s perceptions of the book world’s major prizes and other depressing things. (theBookseller.com)

Science fiction author Peter Riley to pay for readers in a bid to get his novel published. (The Guardian)

R.I.P. Mary Stegner, widow of writer Wallace Stegner. (Jacket Copy)

“On this day in 1910 Margaret Wise Brown was born. Her over one hundred children’s books — these include the classics The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon — reflect the influence of Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s “here-and-now” approach to children’s literature; her eccentric and enjoyable personality seems all her own making.” (Today in Literature)