Why do you write? Author Meredith Maran asked 20 great writers that question, collecting their replies in her new collection, Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do. 

On the Morning Media Menu today, Maran shared writing advice she learned while getting responses from Isabel Allende, David Baldacci, Jennifer Egan, Sebastian Junger and Ann Patchett.

Press play below to listen to the whole interview on SoundCloud. We’ve collected a few quotes from the interview as well…

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On April 23, 2013, 25,000 readers will give away a half million books in the United States to celebrate World Book Night. Below, we’ve listed the 30 books they will give away next year.

If you want to give away books to celebrate the event, follow this link to apply to be a book giver. You must apply before January 23, 2013. Novelists Ann Patchett and James Patterson will serve as the honorary chairpeople of the event and the authors have waived royalties for the books. Here’s more about the event:

volunteer book lovers [will] help promote reading by going into their communities and personally handing out specially printed copies to light or non-readers and to those without the means or access to printed books … The 30 World Book Night U.S. titles for 2013, chosen by an independent panel of booksellers and librarians, were also announced. Thousands of copies of each World Book Night title will be printed as special, not-for-resale paperbacks.

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What’s your favorite bookstore? My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop comes out on November 13th, sharing recommendations from 84 writers.

Published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, it features bookstores around the country, including The Strand (New York, NY), Powell`s (Portland, OR) and Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA). Publishing industry consultant Ronald Rice and “Booksellers Across America” edited the book.

Contributors ranged from John Grisham to Chuck Palahniuk to bookstore owner Ann Patchett. The book also contains illustrations by Leif Parsons, an introduction by Richard Russo and an afterword by Emily St. John Mandel.

You can find all these bookshops and more in our Best Indie Bookstores on Twitter list.

J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series, has plans to come to the United States to do one public event for her new novel The Casual Vacancy.

Rowling’s new novel from Little, Brown and Company is about the politics at work in a seemingly idyllic small town. It is the author’s first novel written for adults, a departure from her kids fantasy novels. Rowling will speak about the book at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall on October 16th at 8 p.m.. Author Ann Patchett will interview Rowling on stage, after which Rowling will take questions from the audience and then sign books.

Tickets go on sale on Monday September 10th and cost $37, if you buy them in the theater box office, $43 if you buy them online, and $44 if you buy them over the phone. Tickets include a copy of the book.

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).

Bookstore owner and novelist Ann Patchett wrote the most quoted passage on Goodreads last year in State of Wonder: “Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”

During the same period, City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare was the most quoted book on Goodreads. Nearly 130,000 quotes were added to the social network last year–we’ve included a Goodreads infographic linking to all the most popular quotes of 2011.

If you want to share book quotes on Facebook, you can also follow this link to enable Goodreads on your Facebook Timeline. The new app connects with your Goodreads account, making the books and quotes you read a permanent part of your Facebook memories.

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So far, more than 1,300 writers have signed a new Writers in Support of the Occupy Movement petition.

The petition is composed of a single sentence: “We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world.” The site now includes short essays by different writers, including Francine Prose, Lemony Snicket, D.A. Powell, Duncan Murrell, Anne Waldman, Danica Novgorodoff and Michael Voll, Maureen Miller, Daphne Carr, Alice Walker, Paula Z. Segal, John McManus, David Hollander, Blair Braverman, Scott Sparling, and Joshua Cohen.

So far, the petition has virtual signatures from Alison Bechdel, Samuel R. Delaney, Jennifer Egan, Barbara Ehrenreich, Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Lethem, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie and many other authors. You can sign at the bottom of the page, but the organizers are processing a huge influx of signatures.

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The National Book Award finalists were unveiled yesterday and many readers instantly started drawing lists of influential authors who didn’t make the list. Over at Salon, Laura Miller took the most dramatic stance in her essay “How the National Book Awards made themselves irrelevant.”

She cited four popular novels that the judges passed over: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett and The Submission by Amy Waldman.

Here’s more from the essay: “the National Book Award in fiction, more than any other American literary prize, illustrates the ever-broadening cultural gap between the literary community and the reading public. The former believes that everyone reads as much as they do and that they still have the authority to shape readers’ tastes, while the latter increasingly suspects that it’s being served the literary equivalent of spinach. Like the Newbery Medal for children’s literature, awarded by librarians, the NBA has come to indicate a book that somebody else thinks you ought to read, whether you like it or not.”

In 2001, novelist Ann Patchett published Bel Canto, a gorgeous and suspenseful introduction to the world of opera music. If you have a Spotify account, enjoy this playlist collecting 30 songs mentioned in the novel–two hours of writing music.

Here’s an excerpt from Bel Canto, describing the first song on the playlist: “[He] chose Rusalka as a measure of his respect for [the singer]. It was the centerpiece of her repertoire and would require no extra preparation on her behalf, a piece that surely would have been included in the program had he not requested it … He simply wanted to hear her sing Rusalka while standing close to her in a room. If a human soul should dream of me, may he still remember me on awaking! His translator had written it out for him from the Czech years ago.”

Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service. Once you have an account, check out our Ann Patchett Spotify Playlist and our Henry Miller Spotify Playlist. If you have more ideas for a particular playlist, you can always add your suggestions in the comments section–we will update our mix.

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Novelist Ann Patchett hopes to open a bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee with Random House sales rep Karen Hayes.

Last year the parent company of Joseph-Beth Booksellers and Davis-Kidd Booksellers filed for bankruptcy, closing (among other stores) the Davis-Kidd Booksellers–leaving Nashville without a bookstore. In the Book Case video embedded above, Patchett discussed the bookstore problem.

Patchett explained in an interview with the Boston Phoenix: “I don’t know if it’s the craziest idea in the world, but I cannot live in a city without a book store. It is so weird to have a book coming out when there are no book stores here. I think we’ve got to get back to a 3000-square-foot store and not 30,000. Amazon is always going to have everything — you can’t compete with that. But there is, I believe, still a place for a store where people read books.” (Via Matt Staggs & Maud Newton)