The University of Southern California has received a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce a video game based on the work of Henry David Thoreau. You can explore the game in the video embedded above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “The game will take place in a real-time 3D environment which will replicate the geography of Walden Pond and the woods in which Thoreau made his home using both game technologies and video. Beyond the replication of a virtual environment, however, the gameplay itself will embody the experiment that Thoreau set for himself, reinforcing the basic messages of his work. Walden, a game posits a new genre of play, in which reflection and insight play an important role in the player experience. ”

You can download free eBook edition of Thoreau’s Walden at this link. At the same time, a number of PBS shows saw significant reductions or cuts in their NEA grants this year.

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Last night poet Nikky Finney rocked the National Book Awards with her acceptance speech for the poetry award. You can watch her speech in the video embedded above–simply scroll ahead to 16:10-mark.

Follow this link to read a free sample of her award winning book, Head Off & Split. When she finished, host John Lithgow remarked: “That was the best acceptance speech for anything I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s also the loudest I’ve ever heard anyone cheer for an award for poetry.”

Here are a few excerpts from the speech: “We begin with history, the slave codes of South Carolina,” she reads. “We shiver together … To be in your company is to brightly burn … Black people were the only people in the United States who were ever officially not allowed to become literate. I am now officially speechless.”

Les Pockell, the former associate publisher and vice president at Grand Central Publishing, passed away at 68-years-old.

Before moving to Warner Books–the imprint that would later become Grand Central–Pockell had worked at St. Martin’s Press, Doubleday, and Book-of-the-Month Club. He edited a variety of books, from The 101 Greatest Business Principles of All Time to the mysteries of Donald Westlake to the children’s work of John Lithgow. Slice Magazine has a comic tribute to his encyclopedic knowledge about the world.

Here’s more from the AP: “Grand Central publisher and executive vice president Jamie Raab said she liked to call him ‘The Professor’ because Pockell knew so much about so many subjects and would become visibly animated in discussion, his hands ‘flailing’ everywhere.” (Via Sarah Weinman)

“Press? I could tell by your clothes…” sniffed one greeter at the New York Public Library’s black-tie Library Lions gala last night, analyzing this GalleyCat editor’s corduroy jacket, wrinkled slacks, and uncharacteristically snazzy leather shoes. The guests sipped cocktails in a lavishly decorated salon inside the library, the room decked out with candles, ten-foot-tall floral arrangements, and a paparazzi crew. For one glitzy night, NYC high society dined alongside media moguls like Si Newhouse and novelists like Colson Whitehead.

Once inside, this GalleyCat editor quizzed guests about the one thing that really matters in this world: books. Actor, author and host John Lithgow recalled his favorite library book: “At my library in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I checked out the entire short works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” he recalled. “It was great storytelling.”

Author Fran Lebowitz reminisced about checking out a John O’Hara book with her mother’s library card. The librarian forced the young reader to call her mother to confirm that she could check out the racy title: “She didn’t care!” exclaimed Lebowitz. “That ruined my mother’s reputation at that library.”

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Actor John Lithgow channeled Mark Twain in that book trailer and a free audiobook (available for one week only) at the The New Yorker–all to celebrate the launch of HarperStudio’s new title, “Who Is Mark Twain?”

In addition to the Lithgow freebies, HarperStudio is experimenting with a new digital book bundle. Readers who purchase the $19.99 hardcover before June 19, 2009 will get a free copy of the digital book.

Here’s more from the post: “When Mark Twain died, he left an enormous amount of unpublished literature. And though not all of it, perhaps, is worthy of perfect binding, HarperStudio has taken the best and collected it in a volume titled ‘Who Is Mark Twain?’”