writing.today.com

1. “Herman Rosenblat, who has acknowledged inventing his story of meeting his wife on opposite sides of a concentration camp fence, told ABC’s Good Morning America that he has no regrets and would tell the story again given another chance.

“It wasn’t a lie,” he said during a taped segment aired Wednesday. “It was my imagination, and in my mind, I believed it. Even now, I believe it.”

And guess whose TV program he was on several times? You guessed it! Oprah. Another faked memoir on Oprah. I’m starting to think her producers need to have every memoir author take a lie detector test before he or she can go on the show.

But if Rosenblat believes it, then he’d pass the test. Which makes him what?

2. The Dubai literary festival has banned British author Geraldine Bedell because her novel “contains references to homosexuality”. The book was going to be premiered at the festival, but now it can’t be… obviously.

“It’s ironic because the book is incredibly sympathetic to the Gulf,” said the author. And to Islam, by her account. Bedell’s publisher, Juliet Annan, said: “It’s all very unfortunate. In effect the censor has said they will ban it, which means no book chain can buy it.”

The festival’s Web site invites people to “Join 65 of the world’s leading authors in workshops, discussion groups and book signings at the first event of its kind in the Middle East.”

And what a celebration of creativity it will be.

3.  Neil Gaiman has won The John Newbery Medal - which is the top prize for children’s literature. It’s like a Kiddy Pulitzer, or Nobel Prize for Literature.

Yes, Neil Gaiman. The novel actually sounds charming. At the beginning of the story, a baby boy escapes the person who kills his older sister and his parents. “The boy totters to a decrepit cemetery, where he’s adopted by ghosts, christened Nobody Owens (Bod for short) and given the Freedom of the Graveyard.”

No doubt I’ll read it eventually. I’m just curious what’s happening over at the Newbery offices.

4. And if none of that made your head feel fuzzy…

The life of Anna Nicole Smith is set to become an opera. And not in a tiny theater somewhere. The Royal Opera in Britain is planning the show. You have time to save up because it won’t run until 2011.

Which makes sense because the Aztecs said the world will end in 2012.