Hadi Matar, the man who stabbed Salman Rushdie, has been found guilty of attempted murder, and faces up to thirty-two years in prison, the New York Times reports.

For Public Books, Sean Hooks interviews Claire Messud about what is distracting people from good writing. When considering if the internet and smartphones “have to some extent divided and conquered us,” Messud says, “I really do believe in our animal selves, the experience of being in a room.” She adds, “I’m big into our embodied selves…. I believe in the amazing complexities of what we can express and convey in language if people will only make the effort and take the time.”

Sophia Stewart writes for Publishers Weekly about Stephanie Anderson’s book Women in Independent Publishing: A History of Unsung Innovators, 1953–1989 (University of New Mexico Press, 2024). The book features interviews with twenty-five visionary women and nonbinary editors and publishers who helped shape the small press landscape from the 1950s to the 1980s. As to why women continue to dominate the independent publishing landscape, Carey Salerno, the publisher of the poetry press Alice James Books, says, “I think women—and other individuals who have been historically marginalized—are drawn to independent publishing because it’s a more caring and democratic landscape.” Michelle Dotter, publisher and editor in chief of Dzanc Books, offers another theory: “Is it too cynical to say, because there’s less money and power involved? Sincerely, I think it’s partly that, and partly that the Big Five hasn’t always made space for women in the top ranks.”

Emily Gould writes for New York magazine about the celebrity book clubs that could actually change your life as an author. The top four book clubs according to one publicist are Oprah’s Book Club, Read with Jenna on the Today show, Reese’s Book Club, and Good Morning America. However, the proliferation of celebrity book clubs has led some in the book business to worry about market oversaturation. Publicist Paul Bogaards notes the inevitable “dilution that takes place because they’re all competing for the same subset of eyeballs,” emphasizing that the “clubs have to continually invent and find ways to engage with their readers and their communities.”

For Book Riot, Kathleen Schmidt, the founder and CEO of KMS Public Relations, discusses how tariffs will impact book costs for readers. The tariff on Chinese imports will likely increase the price of books that are more expensive to print. Schmidt explains that those books include board books for children, illustrated books, four color cookbooks, and special edition hardcovers. If readers “notice that the price of books is increasing, it’s not to punish the consumer,” Schmidt adds. “It’s to keep the publishing ecosystem flowing” and to fairly compensate the people working on those books.

More than 650 books have been seized from stores in Kashmir as Indian police crack down on dissent, the Guardian reports. Most of the titles were written by Abul A’la Maududi, a twentieth-century Islamic scholar who founded Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamic organization banned in Kashmir. The police said that the raids were “based on credible intelligence regarding the clandestine sale and distribution of literature promoting the ideology of a banned organization.”

The American Booksellers Association will celebrate its 125th anniversary as an organization supporting and advocating for independent booksellers at this year’s Winter Institute, which runs from February 23 to February 26 in Denver, Colorado, Publishers Weekly reports. The conference will include talks, presentations, and networking with editors, publishers, booksellers, and more than a hundred authors.

The Jon A. Lindseth Lewis Carroll collection has been donated to Christ Church College at the University of Oxford, where Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) taught math from 1855 to 1881, Fine Books & Collections reports. The collection features manuscripts, photographs, and early editions of Carroll’s books, including the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland series. To celebrate the gift, the college has opened an exhibition showcasing some of the collection’s highlights.

The social media readers’ platform StoryGraph, which uses AI to offer readers tracking tools and recommend their next books, has now reached 3.8 million users, the Guardian reports. StoryGraph founder, software engineer and developer Nadia Odunayo, says, “I think the number one thing, if people are comparing us with Goodreads, is that a lot of people do go: ‘It’s just not owned by Amazon.’”

The finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced this morning and include Andrew Garfield in the audiobook production category, Percival Everett in the fiction category, and Cindy Juyoung Ok in the poetry category, the Los Angeles Times reports. Amanda Gorman, Pico Iyer, and Emily Witt will also be honored at the ceremony on April 25 in Los Angeles.

Oprah Winfrey’s latest book club pick is Dream State (Doubleday, 2025) by Eric Puchner, the Associated Press reports. Set mostly in Montana and California, the novel is about a love triangle among two college friends and the woman they both wanted to marry. In a statement, Winfrey said, “This is the kind of book you won’t want to put down written by a brilliant storyteller.”

The law firm Fisher Phillips shares insights for employers as sixteen states take a stand against Trump’s anti-DEI policies. State attorneys general from traditionally “blue” states such as New York, California, Massachusetts, and Illinois maintain that DEI programs remain lawful and are vital to fair and productive workplaces. Fisher Phillips goes on to say that employers should prepare for increased state agency attention, further state-level guidance, and evolving best practices.

Hundreds of poets, playwrights, dancers, visual artists, and others have signed a letter calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to reverse the current administration’s grant requirements that forbid the promotion of diversity or “gender ideology,” the New York Times reports. The letter states: “Obedience in advance only feeds authoritarianism,” and adds that “the arts are for and represent everybody.”

Nathalie op de Beeck writes for Publishers Weekly about how authors are reclaiming Indigenous histories. Deborah Jackson Taffa, a citizen of the Yuma Nation and Laguna Pueblo and author of the memoir Whiskey Tender (Harper, 2024), said Indigenous writers are often encouraged to tell their stories “through a socially sanctioned, mainstream lens” to meet supposed market demands. Publishers Weekly spoke with Indigenous authors of forthcoming fiction and nonfiction that defy common stereotypes and tropes. Among the authors interviewed are Dennis E. Staples, Julian Brave NoiseCat, and Mary Annette Pembe.

Fatima Jalloh offers advice on how to host poetry workshops for the Creative Independent. They advise facilitators to understand the different types of workshops (academic, community, generative, craft, etc.), create a safe, welcoming environment, manage time, filter feedback, and adapt to the needs of the participants.

James Parker writes for the Atlantic about the bad poems Robert Frost wrote before his renowned works and the “huge, unpoetic popularity” that followed. “Many of his poems turn on the problem of having a mind—of simply being conscious, observant, in our weird human way, while existence churns through us and beyond us,” Parker writes.

Six publishers have come together to form the Stable Book Group, Publishers Weekly reports. Chris Gruener and Keith Riegert launched the collective, which merges four existing publishers—She Writes Press, Trafalgar Square Books, Ulysses Press, and VeloPress—with the recently founded Galpón Press joining as a client, and Mountain Gazette Books joining as a partner. Staff will work across all the companies allowing the publishers to share resources as well as editorial, production, and accounting operations.

Sarah Jessica Parker will be this year’s recipient of PEN America’s “Literary Service Award,” and Jon Yaged, the CEO of Macmillan Publishers, will receive the “Business Visionary Award,” the Associated Press reports. The awards will be presented on May 15 at PEN America’s annual spring gala.

Hachette Book Group grew sales by 7 percent in 2024, with Grand Central, Orbit, and Little, Brown Books for Young readers delivering “particularly exceptional results,” according to CEO David Shelley, Shelf Awareness reports.

The New York Public Library will make the archive of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne open to the public on March 26. The archive is comprised of 336 boxes which include reference material for the authors’ books; interview transcripts, notes, and correspondence with subjects that led to various articles; and the writers’ daybooks, in which they recorded their daily experiences in intricate detail for up to fifty years.