The Poetry Foundation has published “Poetic Presidents,” a study of 12 Presidents and “the poets that inspired them.”

Just in time for the election, the match-ups include George Washington and Phyllis Wheatley (the first African-American female to publish a book of poetry), John F. Kennedy and Robert Frost (the first poet to perform a reading at a presidential swearing in event) and Barack Obama and Elizabeth Alexander.

Here’s more from the article: “Politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose, former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said. While it’s debatable whether this epically long and tumultuous election cycle has inspired much verse, we at the Poetry Foundation would like to think that poetry has its place at the White House regardless of who emerges as the victor on November 6.”

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The Amateur author Edward Klein has signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint.

According to CBS News, one of the books will profile the 2016 presidential nominee of the Democratic party. The other will spotlight on politicians who promote “the left-wing political agenda.”

In the past, Klein has written books about the President John F. Kennedy, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, secretary of state Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. Prior to establishing his publishing career, Klein worked in journalism. He served as an editor at both Newsweek and The New York Times Magazine.

Stephen King‘s forthcoming novel, 11/22/63, has already been picked up for film adaptation. Variety reports that Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme has optioned the feature film rights.

Demme will work on the script, produce and direct this project. King has signed on as an executive producer. Ilona Herzberg, who has previously worked with Demme on The Manchurian Candidate film, will also produce.

Here’s more from the article: “Book follows Jake Epping, a 35-year-old high school English teacher from Maine who travels back in time to try to prevent President John F. Kennedy‘s assassination … [the director] helmed adaptations of Richard Condon‘s The Manchurian Candidate, Toni Morrison‘s Beloved and, most notably, Thomas Harris‘ The Silence of the Lambs, for which Demme won an Oscar.” (via Publishers Lunch)

In an eBook Summit talk, Vook CEO Brad Inman and Perseus Books Group online marketing director Peter Costanzo explained the process for turning a print book into a multimedia product.

Vook partnered with NBC News to acquire several film reels chronicling the days of John F. Kennedy‘s presidency and approached Perseus to collaborate on a project that eventually spawned the vook, JFK 50 Days. The video embedded above showcases the iPad app version.

They then acquired the multimedia rights to the title, JFK: Day by Day: A Chronicle of the 1,036 Days of John F. Kennedy’s Presidency by Terry Golway and Les Krantz. Multimedia rights cover the inclusion of multimedia content embedded in the text. Perseus picked 50 moments from the footage in celebration of the 50 years that have passed since Kennedy’s presidential election.

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Renowned poet Maya Angelou has donated 300 boxes filled with her personal papers to the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Angelou had this quote in the press release: “The Schomburg is a repository of the victories and the losses of the African American experience … I am grateful that it exists so that all the children, Black and White, Asian, Spanish-Speaking, Native American, and Aleutian can know there is a place where they can go and find the truth of the peoples’ history.”

The donation contains the notes for her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and some of her most famous poems. One notable inclusion are the notes for the poem written at the request of former President Bill Clinton, On the Pulse of Morning. The video embedded above shows her reading it at Clinton’s 1993 inauguration. Several unpublished manuscripts and poems have also been included in the lot.

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