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Have you ever written a letter to one of your favorite authors?

More than 50,000 young readers (grades 4 through 12) participated in the Library of Congress’ Letters About Literature program. Each participant was tasked with writing a letter to an author (living or deceased) about how one of their books affected them.

According to the press release, this “initiative is a reading-promotion program of the Center for the Book, with the goal of instilling a lifelong love of reading in the nation’s youth.” Below, we’ve posted the full list of winners and honors.

Level 1 (Grades 4 to 6)

National Prize: Gerel Sanzhikov of New Jersey’s letter focused on The Running Dream by Wendell Van Draanen.

National Honor Award: Chelsea Brown of Virginia’s letter focused on Shades of Black by Sandra L. Pinkney.

Level 2 (Grades 7 to 8)

National Prize: Gabriel Ferris of Maine’s letter focused on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

National Honor Award (three-way tie): Emmy Goyette of New Hampshire’s letter focused on Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Jonathan Hoff of New Jersey’s letter focused on Maus by Art Spiegelman.

Julianna Gorman of Maryland’s letter focused on Night by Elie Wiesel.

Level 3 (Grades 9 to 12)

National Prize: Aidan Kingwell of Illinois’ letter focused on the Mary Oliver poem \"When Death Comes.\"

National Honor Award (tied between two participants): Lisa Le of the District of Columbia’s focused on The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

Hannah DesChamp of Oregon’s letter focused on the Pablo Neruda poem \"I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You.\"

Journalist Alan Friedman has inked a deal to write a biography profiling the former prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi. Friedman (pictured, via) devoted more than 15 months to researching his subject; he acquired more than 100 hours of interview records.

Rizzoli will publish the Italian version in October 2015. Hachette Book Group USA will release the American edition in Fall 2015.

Here’s more from the press release: “Written with Berlusconi’s full cooperation, Berlusconi will offer an unvarnished look at the billionaire media mogul’s astonishing life…In the tradition of the Frost/Nixon interviews and with the same unfettered access of Walter Isaacson in his biography of Steve Jobs, Alan Friedman chronicles Silvio Berlusconi’s incredible rise to power from cruise ship crooner to real estate tycoon, from founding the first commercial television network in history to turning AC Milan into a world-class soccer club, and then
ultimately becoming the longest-serving Italian Prime Minister in history.”

A teaser trailer has been unleashed for the Steve Jobs movie. The video embedded above offers glimpses of actor Michael Fassbender playing the titular role.

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin was tasked with adapting Walter Isaacson’s biography for the script. Entertainment Weekly reports that this film adaptation will hit theaters on October 9th. (via ComingSoon.net)

Universal has wrapped up the casting process for the Steve Jobs movie.

According to Deadline, Michael Fassbender will play the titular role. Prior to his hiring, the movie studio tried to convince Christian Bale to take on the part.

Other actors who have also signed on for this project include Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, and Jeff Daniels as John Sculley. Danny Boyle will serve as the director. Aaron Sorkin has been tasked with adapting Walter Isaacson’s biography for the script.

Chipotle Mexican Grill has recruited ten new writers to contribute pieces for its “Cultivating Thought” line.

Jonathan Safran Foer returns to serve as both curator and editor. The participants include Neil Gaiman, Aziz Ansari, Augusten Burroughs, Walter Isaacson, Amy Tan, Paulo Coelho, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Barbara Kingsolver, Julia Alverez and Jeffrey Eugenides. The company’s cups and bags will feature short stories and illustrations.

Gaiman announced on his Facebook page that his piece focuses on “refugees and the fragility of the world.” Here’s an excerpt: “There are now fifty million refugees in the world today, more than at any time since the end of the Second World War. And at some point, for each one of those people, the world shifted. Their world, solid and predictable, erupted or dissolved into chaos or danger or pain. They realized that they had to run. You have two minutes to pack. You can only take what you can carry easily.” Follow this link to learn more. (via The Hollywood Reporter)

The Innovators author Walter Isaacson will deliver the keynote speech at the Digital Book World Conference + Expo. Isaacson’s presentation will focus on “”Innovators, Collaborators and Change Agents of the Digital Revolution.”

More than 100 speakers will give talks throughout the event. It is set to take place from January 13th to 15th in New York City.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Amazon and Simon & Schuster have established a new multi-year print and digital agreement. The previous contract was scheduled to expire in two months.

Here’s more from The Wall Street Journal: “Simon & Schuster, whose recently published works include Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators and Colm Toibin’s Nora Webster, will set the consumer prices of its digital books, and Amazon will be able to discount titles in certain situations, according to one person familiar with the agreement. Simon & Schuster titles also will be well promoted on Amazon’s website, the person said.”

Many speculate that this development will put more pressure on Hachette to wrap up the ongoing dispute. Several writers have publicly spoken about the situation including Stephen Colbert, John Green, and Malcolm Gladwell. Earlier this week, economist Paul Krugman wrote a New York Times article criticizing Amazon’s business practices. How do you predict this will affect the conflict between Amazon and Hachette?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending October 12, 2014–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #2 in Hardcover Fiction) Lila by Marilynne Robinson: “Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church—the only available shelter from the rain—and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.” (October 2014)

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Isaacson's incredible retrospective of the digital revolution over the last 200 years not only offers great insight into the minds of the inventors, but also focuses on the surprising amount of collaboration that allowed many of the ideas to succeed. Whether you're a true technogeek or simply interested in human behavior and history, The Innovators [...]

Milq, a company that powers a culture-sharing application and website, has launched a new content category for books. Through a new agreement, Simon & Schuster will serve as its exclusive publishing house partner.

According to the press release, the “books” feature allows users to “share audio and video around their favorite books on Milq, organizing them into collaborative, interactive playlists called Beads.” Simon & Schuster will establish two beads, “What Are You Reading?” and “Books That Changed My Life,” that will be continually updated with responses from the publisher’s writers.

Several authors are already taking part by creating beads. Steve Jobs author Walter Isaacson constructed a “Great Digital Innovations” bead with vintage footage of the video game SpaceWar! and of “The Mother of All Demos.” After novelist Anna Todd hopes fans will contribute songs to her “Soundtrack to After” bead. What do you think?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Famed biography writer Walter Isaacson has been named this year's keynote speaker at the forthcoming BookExpo America (BEA) conference. The Slate Group editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg will sit with Isaacson for an interview. According to the press release, the two will discuss Isaacson's forthcoming book, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, which is slated for release in October 2014. This event will take place on May 30th.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Simon & Schuster will publish Walter Isaacson‘s new book The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, this October.

The latest work from the biographer of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin, explores how creativity, science and technology intersects. Here is an excerpt:

The computer and the internet are among the most important innovations of our era, but few people know who created them. They were not conjured up in a garret or garage by solo inventors suitable to be singled out on magazine covers or put into a pantheon with Edison, Bell, and Morse. Instead, most of the innovations of the digital age were done collaboratively. There were a lot of fascinating people involved, some ingenious and a few even geniuses. This is the story of these pioneers, hackers, inventors, and entrepreneurs—who they were, how their minds worked, and what made them so creative. It’s also a narrative of how they collaborated and why their ability to work as teams made them even more creative.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sony Pictures Entertainment will adapt Walter Isaacson‘s bestselling biography of Steve Jobs, with The Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin writing on the script.

Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Amy Pascal had this statement:  “Jobs’ story is unique: he was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time but of all time. There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin; in his hands, we’re confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining, and polarizing.”

Mark Gordon, Scott Rudin and Guymon Casady will produce the upcoming biopic.  Deadline Hollywood has the release.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James debuted on TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list this year, joining comedians turned writers and Steve Jobs’ biographer on the prestigious list.

TIME editor-at-large Brenda Luscombe wrote: “Six months ago she was Erika Leonard, a mother of two who dabbled in saucy stories for the Web. Now she’s E.L. James, publishing phenomenon, whose Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has deeply stirred booksellers, Hollywood and, apparently, many, many mothers. Reading may never be the same.”

The TIME 100 list also included features about Ann Patchett (written by Elizabeth Gilbert), Walter Isaacson (written by Madeleine Albright), Stephen Colbert (written by Garry Trudeau), Chelsea Handler (written by Kathy Griffin), and Asghar Farhadi (written by Richard Corliss).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James debuted on TIME magazine’s TIME 100 list this year, joining comedians turned writers and Steve Jobs’ biographer on the prestigious list.

TIME editor-at-large Brenda Luscombe wrote: “Six months ago she was Erika Leonard, a mother of two who dabbled in saucy stories for the Web. Now she’s E.L. James, publishing phenomenon, whose Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has deeply stirred booksellers, Hollywood and, apparently, many, many mothers. Reading may never be the same.”

The TIME 100 list also included features about Ann Patchett (written by Elizabeth Gilbert), Walter Isaacson (written by Madeleine Albright), Stephen Colbert (written by Garry Trudeau), Chelsea Handler (written by Kathy Griffin), and Asghar Farhadi (written by Richard Corliss).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple last night, generating thousands of tweets, articles and tributes. As Jobs steps back, Simon & Schuster said that Walter Isaacson‘s biography of the tech leader will include his resignation when it comes out on November 21st.

Here’s more from PC Mag: “Simon & Schuster spokeswoman Tracey Guest told PCMag that Isaacson ‘speaks to Jobs regularly and is still working on the final chapter of the book.’ … The book promises interviews with Jobs’ ex-girlfriends, foes, family, and fired colleagues. Furthermore, Jobs apparently didn’t demand to review the book before it went to print. There are plenty of unauthorized biographies of Jobs, but this is the first written with his blessing.”

Above, we’ve embedded a video of Jobs introducing the Macintosh computer in 1984. Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography will sell for $19.50 in hardcover on Amazon and the Kindle price is set at $16.50. (Via Publishers Weekly)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last night I came across a chilling story behind a famous photograph of Albert Einstein.

The portrait was taken by Philippe Halsman, a photographer who had escaped Nazi Germany with Einstein’s help. Meeting together in 1947, Halsman held a camera while he chatted with Einstein. He asked Einstein if he believed there could ever be a lasting peace.

Einstein answered with weary resignation,

“No, as long as there will be man, there will be war.”

According to Walter Isaacson, from page 494 of the fine book, Einstein, that I described on Monday:

“At that moment Halsman clicked his shutter and captured Einstein’s sadly knowing eyes for what became a famous portrait.”

Here’s the Halsman photograph. You can almost see the thought lingering behind his eyes.

While I surfed that up, I also caught another wave — a copy of the first page of the letter that Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, alerting him about the potential of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type.” This was the letter that set the Manhattan Project into motion. As a side note, though this was a matter of utmost urgency, it required two months for the letter to be finally delivered into the President’s hands.

Biographer Walter Isaacson has landed a deal with Simon & Schuster to publish an authorized biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. iSteve: The Book of Jobs will be released in early 2012.

International Creative Management literary agent Amanda Urban negotiated the deal with editorial director Alice Mayhew. The manuscript has also been acquired by several worldwide publishers including Little, Brown Book Group (UK), Companhia das Letras (Brazil), and China CITIC Press (China).

According to the press release, Isaacson spent three years interviewing Jobs, his family members, Apple colleagues, and competitors to write this book. He has written biographies of  Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Kissinger.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.