Great Regulars: Although Peter Stothard, who is editor of the

Times Literary Supplement, is a blogger himself--and praises literary websites such as the Complete Review--he expressed fears that the burgeoning amount of online opinion about books could be damaging to the future of writing.

"If the mass of unargued opinion chokes off literary critics . . . then literature will be the lesser for it," he said.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Books bloggers are harming literature, warns Booker prize head judge

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Germany's Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass, who earlier this year was barred from Israel for criticising its nuclear policy, has written a poem praising the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.

Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's secret nuclear plant near Dimona, spent 18 years in prison--much of it in solitary confinement--after leaking details of the country's nuclear programme to the Sunday Times in 1986.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Günter Grass poem praises nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu

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Jorie Graham has become the first American woman ever to win one of the UK's most prestigious poetry accolades, the Forward prize for best collection, beating Oxford's professor of poetry Geoffrey Hill to take the £10,000 award.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Jorie Graham takes 2012 Forward prize

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The "real" Tom Sawyer was a heavy-drinking firefighter and local hero whom Mark Twain befriended in the 1860s, according to new analysis by the Smithsonian magazine.

The renowned American monthly attempts in its latest issue to settle once and for all a question that has long perplexed scholars: did Twain really name his child hero Tom after his drinking partner Sawyer, a "stocky, round-faced . . . customs inspector, volunteer fireman, special policeman and bona fide local hero?"

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Mark Twain 'based Tom Sawyer on drinking buddy from steam baths'
then The Smithsonian: The Guardian: The Adventures of the Real Tom Sawyer

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As well as [Elizabeth] Wurtzel, the blogger Ana Marie Cox is being asked to return her $81,250 advance (and at least $50,000 in interest) for not writing a "humorous examination of the next generation of political activists", signed in 2006, and Herman Rosenblat, a Holocaust survivor whose story of how he met his wife turned out to be a fabrication, is being chased for a $30,000 advance (and at least $10,000 in interest).

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Penguin sues authors over 'failing to deliver books'

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