Eden Ross Lipson, Books Editor at the New York Times dies at 66. Editor of children's literature at the Times from 1984 to 2005, Lipson also published a Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children, referencing over a 1000 titles for children and young adults. Lipson also organized panels and conferences on children's literature in several parts of the US. A children's writer as well, her own book will be released in August and is entitled "Applesauce season" by Roaring Book Press.

Beat poet and writer Harold Norse died at the age of 92 in San Francisco, USA June 9, 2009.
Born in Brooklyn in 1916, Mr Norse was best known for his unprecedented examination of gay identity and sexuality in poetry. Along with renowned writers and poets of his generation such as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, the Beat poet challenged academic poetry writing in the 1960s and adopted a free and innovative form of writing based on an idiom of everyday language. He traveled extensively during this period, going to Italy, Morocco (where he met with fellow Beat poet Paul Bowles) and France, where he settled with his companions in Paris's Left Bank and where he wrote his novella Beat Hotel, inspired by Burroughs's cut-up techniques. Back in the USA in the early seventies, Norse settled in the progressive city of San Francisco where his most productive years debuted. Publishers, City Lights released his Hotel Nirvana: Selected poems, 1953-1973, and was recognized as a promising talent within the city's cultural and literary life. A few years later, he published in 1977 the collection Carnivorous Saints: Gay poems, 1941-1976. In 1986, Norse released "Harold Norse: The Love Poems, 1940-1985 and much later in 2003, publishers Thunder's Mouth Press put out In the Hub of the Fiery Force, Collected Poems of Harold Norse 1934-2003. Norse was openly gay and became a nationally known gay liberation poet. His style and themes in the world of poetry have been distinguished for the expressiveness of beauty and pleasure.