Last week we focused on stuffing ourselves along with the turkey, but this week we’re filling up on literary gossip, news and highlights. Mmm mmm good.

– Linktone has launched a first-of-its-kind mobile literature channel in China, called the “m-Novel” Channel. The first literature being published through this channel is a romantic story titled, “Distance”, written by Taiwanese novelist Xuan Huang. This is just another example of the growing trend to marry literature to rapidly expanding technology to increase readership …

My family is as dysfunctional as anybody’s, but we have a good time when we get together. I just returned from four days of Thanksgiving madness — madness being here defined as many board games, several kids running around like banshees, several grownups hanging around the piano belting out torch songs, and a lot of food. At times during this marathon family-fest, I may have even enjoyed myself.

But it’s hard for a writer to be part of a happy family scene without a …

I’m reasonably certain that Pat Benatar wasn’t thinking of poetry when she sang, “Hit me with your best shot,” however, I think that in this case, it works…

Please post a poem or a short piece of prose. Be creative. Be spontaneous.

Fire away.

Here at Literary Kicks, we like to talk about literature, yet the term itself is ambiguous at best. The dictionary defines it thus:

Main Entry: literature
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin litteratura writing, grammar, learning, from litteratus
1 archaic : literary culture
2 : the production of literary work especially as an occupation
3 a (1) : writings in prose or verse; especially : writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest (2) : an example of such writings (what came …

Tell us what books and authors have caught your attention recently, what books are on your “to read” list or what pieces of literature you’re giving thanks for this week.

You know those internet quizzes where you find out what kind of Disney character you are, what root vegetable you are, which flag of the world you are? Well, I don’t know if there’s a quiz for which classic existentialist text you are, but if there were, I’m pretty sure I would be No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre.

This is a comic play about three recently dead people who find themselves in hell. But hell, in Sartre’s vision, has no burning embers or rapacious …

Beth Vieira writes:

“Pablo Neruda said there were only 11 topics for poetry but didn’t specify what they were. One could imagine any range of topics.”

Eleven? Well, I can think of a few, and when I really consider them, I find that the majority of them basically come down to love, in one form or another. This may or may not have to do with the fact that Neruda was a much better poet than I am, I don’t know.

In …

Please hit us up with an instant poem or story or any other flash of brilliance that appears before you …

As if all the holiday book gift guides and new releases weren’t enough to keep us busy, it seems to be award season in the literary world … and so close to Thanksgiving. Perhaps it’s a sign that there are a lot of turkeys about. Heavyweights Tom Wolfe, Philip Roth, Alice Munro and even Dave Eggers have recent volumes out and are getting some buzz just in time to possibly be stuffed in someone’s stocking, but sometimes the more interesting news is a …