An image from the cover of the first issue of Superman.
DC Comics
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
DC Comics has tapped Orson Scott Card, the Ender's Game author who has said homosexuality is "deviant behavior," to write for its new, digital-first Superman. That has sparked outrage among fans. Card also suggested in a 2004 essay that if same-sex marriage is legalized, "our civilization will collapse or fade away."
A school in Brooklyn will be named after Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak.
"The only items there truly unfamiliar to me were two wire racks full of paperbacks, their covers each backlit with the golden glow of God's everlasting presence and bucolic perfection: wheat fields, corn fields, rivers and barns beneath cerulean or honey skies. A plain-clothed woman in some state of muted emotional duress gazed into the middle distance beneath her white bonnet. I spun through the racks, elated, repulsed. Could there be anything better, or worse, than Amish romance novels?" — Rachel Yoder, on Amish romance novels.
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak makes emergency parking announcements with poetry: "Since this is the week/To say je t'aime/Move her car off the even side/By 8 a.m./(Plowing on even side starts at 8 am)."
Morning Edition's Renee Montagne interviews John Borling, an Air Force fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam who spent more than six years in a North Vietnamese prison composing poetry without paper or pencils. He says the resulting book of poetry is a testament to "power of the unwritten word."
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Annalisa Quinn is a contributing writer, reporter, and literary critic for NPR. She created NPR's Book News column and covers literature and culture for NPR.